


tye</W^A<ty4&eaJ%e£# 







SKETCHES 



REMINISCENCES. 



G. Davidson, Printer, 
Serle's Place, Carey Street, London. 



SKETCHES 



REMINISCENCES, 



PRINCIPALLY OF 



PARIS. 



BY J. DO RAN. 



c May the gods 
Direct you to the best/ 

CYMBELINE. 



LONDON: 

PUBLISHED BY S. MAUNDER, 
10, NEWGATE STREET. 

1828. 



31 3b- 






THE FOLLOWING 



TRIFLES 



tnsrntirti 



CHARLES A. WINSER, 

ARTIST, 



HIS AFFECTIONATE AND 
ATTACHED FRIEND, 

THE AUTHOR. 



L'ENVOY. 

I am told that no book can enter the world with- 
out a formal introduction to the gentle reader, and 
that every author makes special observance to 
say a few words at the threshold of his work: 
in compliance with the custom, I have to inform 
my readers, that the following trifles, with the 
exception of one, have already appeared in the 
columns of The Literary Chronicle; that they 
have neither been written for fame nor faim; 
nor under the privations caused by disease or 
domestic calamity ; I have no wife depending 
on my exertions, nor interesting little children 
crying to their father for bread and butter; I 
have too correct an opinion of this my first 
essay, to fear any animadversion from criticism ; 

b 2 



Vlll L ENVOY. 

its unimportance (combined with the author's 
modesty) will be a sufficient safeguard to allow 
it to fret its hour and be forgotten. It will thus 
be seen that I have written for nobody's plea- 
sure but my own, and that I publish at nobody's 
desire but the author's. I have been induced 
to do so by no over-wrought flattery of over- 
kind friends : I have consulted none ; and, in 
fact, have but few for whose opinion I care a 
straw. I offer, then, these Sketches to the 
reading world, without any particular anxiety 
concerning the result of a measure so rash ; and 
should any one be alarmed at the ponderosity, 
or terrified at the superabundance of matter, 
why let him only try his patience on a few, and 
I will once again pray— 

- — i May the gods 
Direct him to the best.' 



CONTENTS. 



^■■r^^v^s-*-.**-^^ 



Page 
I. VlDOG , . . 1 

II. Scotch Weddings 15 

III. Execution in Paris 25 

IV. Maynooth 39 

V. Duke D' Angouleme's Return 

from Spain 53 

VI. Le Palais Royal . 67 

VII, French Priests . 85 

VIII. The Priest's Favourite 105 

IX. A Carnival Adventure ..... 123 

X. The Somnambulist 141 

XI. The Irish Artilleryman . . , . 157 

XII. The Polish Jewess 173 

XIIL A Friend of Mine 197 



VIDOC. 



'He hath ta'en much pains in the king's business.' 

HENRY Vlir. 



VIDOC. 



* He hath ta'en much pains in the king's business.' 

HENRY VIII. 

I shall ever bless the event which caused me 
to visit Paris during the winter of 1822; it 
led to four happy years of sojournment in that 
ville defumee et de boue> to a subsequent short 
but not less happy residence in the fairest cor- 
ner of the land of cakes, and to an intimacy 
with some two or three natives of my own land, 
whose society threw an additional gleam of 
sunshine on a life hitherto undarkened by a 
single cloud. During the month of Septem- 
ber, 1824, I repaired to the Boulevard des Ca~ 
pucines, to witness the return of Charles X. to 
Paris from St. Cloud, whither he had retired, 
immediately after the death of his brother. The 
day was the very reverse of favourable for any 

B 



4 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

thing of display ; the new uniforms and bright 
equipments of the soldiery were drenched with 
the incessant rain ; and heaven's dread artil- 
lery, in successive peals, out-thundered the 
pieces de vingt-quatre, fired from the Barriere 
de l'Etoile, to announce the benign presence of 
his Christian Majesty in his good city of Paris. 
The streets through which the procession 
was to pass were lined by the Garde Roy ale, 
Swiss, Garde Nationale, and troops of the 
line ; they, in common with many of the spec- 
tators, had been awaiting the approach of -the 
day's bravery for several hours, heedless of the 
pelting storm. At length, the approach of a 
brigade of that peculiar class of the mounted 
gendarmerie, known by the appellation of Les 
Hirondelles de la Guillotine, from their con- 
stantly attending at executions, but styled, in 
all the ordinances of the police, Gendarmerie 
d'EIite, assured the worthy lieges that Charles 
of Bourbon was not far behind ; they were fol- 
lowed by lancers, in green, crimson, and silver ; 
cuirassiers, nearly resembling our own Oxford 



VIDOC. 6 

Blues, in corslets breasted by a broad sun; 
chasseurs, hussars, dragoons, the Garde du 
Corps, and the magnificent artilleurs, with the 
less brilliant but not less useful Traine, suc- 
ceeded each other, equipped en grande tenue. 
The splendid Cent Suisses ; the martial Grena- 
diers dela Garde ; the diminutive, dirty, and rag- 
ged troops of the line ; and the awkward National 
Legions, every man in which would have been 
a prize for Falstaff, preceded the King, who, 
mounted on a beautiful grey charger, and sur- 
rounded by a brilliant staff, looked a venerable 
representative of benignity, uncovering his grey 
hairs to the faint shouts of his people, and for- 
mal salutes of his army. His friend and rela- 
tion, the Duke de Bourbon, was a few yards in 
advance of him; his son, the Dauphin, on his 
right; and, if my memory play me not false, I 
think the Duke of Orleans was on his left, in a 
hussar uniform. The royal carriages with the 
princesses followed, and the whole was closed 
by a detachment of gendarmerie. At the mo- 
ment the Duke de Bourbon appeared, a man 
b2 



4 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

of common stature, with small, quick, and 
crafty looking eyes, shaggy beetling brows, and 
shabby genteel costume, denoting an agent of 
police, touched my hat with his cane, and ac- 
companied the action with the words, ( Mon- 
sieur, decoiffez vous? ' Cest un peu fort J I 
thought, in such a shower, but I'll bare my 
head, and risk a fit of the ague, in compliment 
to majesty. There was something singular in 
the words f decoiffez vous> which induced me 
to turn and look at the speaker, and I instantly 
addressed a not unusual question to myself, 
Where have I seen that man ? As the last notes 
of the hunting chorus in Der Freischutz died 
away in the distance, I retraced my steps to- 
wards the Faubourg St. Germain, endeavouring 
to recollect where I had before met with my 
unknown ; but I tortured my mind in vain. I 
summoned spirits from the vasty deep, but they 
came not when I did call for them. Somewhat 
tired, and rather vexed, I entered the little Cafe 
in the garden of the Tuileries, called for a sor- 
bet a la rum, and the Quotidienne, a journal, 



VIDOC. O 

whose strictures excite as much mirth in the 
circles of the Chaussee d'Antin, as those of the 
worthy Morning Post do in some of the London 
coteries. I had got into the middle of an article 
upon the benefits which France had derived 
from the mild sway of Louis the Desired, 
when, by some indefinable association of ideas, 
I recollected that, about two months previous 
to that day, I had, at the Cafe de Foy, observed 
a gentleman seated at the small marble table 
near the fille du comptoir, in apparently close 
conversation with a tall, lean, emaciated looking 
wretch, whose sunken eyes, lank hair, and pale 
features, intimated a long acquaintance with 
dissipation, hunger, and filth. The gentleman 
wore the ribband of the legion of honour, and 
his seeming respectability formed such a con- 
trast with the canaille air of his companion, as 
to attract the attention of every one in the 
room towards them. I now thought that the 
member of the legion of honour bore a singular 
resemblance to the agent of police, and, pleased 
that I had solved my problem, I returned home, 



O SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

satisfied that he must either be the famous 
Vidoc, of whom I had heard so much, or one 
of the numerous spies who infest all places of 
public resort in Paris. 

Vidoc is, in a measure, the Jonathan Wild of 
France ; he is a liberated galley slave, and em- 
ployed by the government of that country on 
the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief; 
but Jonathan Wild may hide his diminished 
head, for his glory is eclipsed by the talents of 
his Gallic rival. Wild's story served as the 
original for the character of Peachum, hi the 
Beggar's Opera ; but, I believe, our neighbours 
have never dared to bring their great man on 
the stage. Wild adopted the manoeuvre of giv- 
ing a reward for goods lost or stolen, without 
asking any questions ; was the receiver-general 
of stolen goods, and the centre and patron of 
the thieving profession, but Vidoc has not so 
much consideration for the worshippers of one 
of the attributes of Mercury; he wrests the 
spoil from the thief, and seeks his reward from 
the rightful owner, and the government by 



VIDOC. 7 

which he is employed ; and his success in this 
branch of his profession is truly astonishing: 
his satellites are innumerable, and are to be 
found in all societies, from the saloons of the 
dowagers of the Faubourg St. Germain to the 
less splendid apartments of the good old ladies 
of the Marais ; from the busy idlers round the 
throne of the Milles Colonnes, to the more 
humble crowd at the Cafe des Aveugles ; they 
are to be found alike at the Grand Opera, and 
among the audience, or rather spectators, at the 
little theatre of Madame Saqui ; at the Jardins 
des Tuileries, and the Jardin Turc ; in short, 
Vidoc, in himself and in the persons of his crea- 
tures, is possessed with ubiquity, and soars 
above Argus, inasmuch that he is not only all 
eyes but all ears. If it be within the bounds 
of human possibility to catch a thief, Vidoc will 
have him ; in an hour he will put on almost as 
many shapes as there are minutes in that space 
of time ; he has a spell as powerful as that of 
the Caliph of Bagdad, and Vidoc's II Bondo- 
cani will bring the police to his assistance, in 



8 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

crowds as numerous as the finny members of 
the ocean, when they rose in shoals to the sur- 
face, to hear St. Anthony preach. A year had 
elapsed since the King's entry into Paris ; the 
tw r elve months had brought with them their 
usual accompaniments of joys and sorrows to 
the greater part of the inhabitants of the metro- 
polis ; to me, at least, it could bring no addi- 
tional happiness, (and, what is better, I thought 
so.) Every comfort of life was within my 
reach ; I had none, nor did I require any, of its 
luxuries,— time flew quick,— and, but this is a 
digression, let it suffice to say that the last five 
years of a life that has not yet attained its fifth 
lustre, have been spent in such a manner, up 
to the very moment of my writing this, as to 
enable me, like Anastatius, to defy Fate to rob 
me of their remembrance. 

It happened, at the period I have mentioned, 
that an English lady of rank lost a superb and 
valuable opera-glass, and after much fruitless 
research, and having good reason to suppose 
that it had passed through the hands of the 



VIDOC. 9 

Ouvreuse des Loges, she was advised to apply 
to Vidoc, knowing that if it were within the 
frontiers, Vidoc would find it. I was honoured 
with the commission, and I the more gladly un- 
dertook it, as I now felt assured I should see 
the prince of spies, and have all my doubts re- 
moved touching his identity with my knight of 
the legion of honour, and the agent of police. 
I accordingly proceeded along the quays, crossed 
the Pont Neuf, and passed through the Place 
Dauphine to the Palais de Justice, rightly judg- 
ing that the latter would be the most likely place 
to ascertain Vidoc's residence; the answers 
which my questions received from respectably 
dressed people, were sufficiently insulting, but 
at length a gendarme offered to conduct me ; I 
thanked him, and he led the way to a little nar- 
row street in the Isle St. Louis, called, I think, 
Rue Dauphine ; he pointed to a low old- 
fashioned house, which I thought looked as if it 
sadly needed the inspection of a surveyor of the 
board of works. A man in a blue smock frock 
was at the door, of whom I inquired for Mon- 
b5 



10 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

sieur Vidoc. He gave me to understand that 
there were a great many waiting to see him, 
and that he himself acted as huissier. I slipped 
a five-franc piece into the horny hand of this 
novel groom of the chamber, and he, instanter, 
ushered me into a low dark room, in which were 
two men, announcing me as * un Monsieur qui 
desire parler a M. Vidoc. 9 One of the occu- 
pants was seated at a bureau, with a pile of sil- 
ver and gold coin before him, part of which he 
was counting out to the man who was standing 
near him. The eyes of the former no sooner 
met mine, than I said to myself, s tu es iste vir ; 
or, as I began to look upon it as something of 
an adventure, I, like a hero of romance, men- 
tally ejaculated it. When he had concluded 
his business with the stranger, he advanced to 
speak to me ; he was attired in deep black, his 
linen of the clearest whitQ, and the ensemble 
emphatically bespoke the gentleman, I ex- 
pected to hear the idiom of the canaille, but, on 
the contrary, he spoke the purest French. 
There was an uncomfortable draught through 



VIDOC. 1 1 

the room, and I could not repress a smile on 
hearing him say, ' Monsieur ne vous decoiffez 
pas. 9 I at length communicated my business, 
described the glass, its cameos, diamonds, its 
gold, and its value ; adding that three weeks 
had elapsed since its loss. He appeared to 
think the latter part of my communication as 
boding ill for its recovery ; he, however, pro- 
mised to do what he could to obtain possession 
of it, if possible, and that if it were in France, 
and not taken to pieces, he assured me he would 
have it on that day week. At our next meeting 
he was dressed in nearly the same mode as when 
I saw him in the Palais Royal ; at the Cafe de 
Foy ; he told me the glass had been dismem- 
bered, and that the stones and gold were pro- 
bably at that moment in the hands of the Jews 
of Rotterdam or Frankfort. A very handsome 
sum had been offered in the event of its being 
reco'^red, but he refused all remuneration, ob- 
serving that, had he succeeded, he should have 
thought himself entitled to the reward, but as 
his endeavours had been productive of no be- 



12 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

nefit to the public, he conscientiously declined 
any recompense. — We bowed and parted. 

I have said, that Vidoc is an enfranchised 
galley slave ; I have also been told that he was 
once a desperate robber, and that he has both 
shoulders branded with the letters " T. F." I 
can say nothing of the truth of such assertions ; 
they are probably false. I found him polite, 
and what we understand as gentlemanly in the 
fullest sense of the word. His occupation, in- 
disputably, is not one *that any gentleman, or 
any one possessing the feelings of a gentleman, 
would select ; but that he has rendered impor- 
tant services to the French government, cannot 
be denied, and that he is a man c more sinned 
against than sinning,' is the firm belief of every 
one intimate with the police of the neighbouring 
kingdom. It does not depend upon us to pre- 
vent being spoken ill of; it is only in our power 
that it be not done deservedly. 



SCOTCH WEDDINGS. 



' 'Twas a fair night, 
My young remembrance cannot parallel 
A fellow to it/ MACBETH, 



15 



SCOTCH WEDDINGS. 



+^-*-^>-*-**-+ 



' 'Twas a fair night, 
My young remembrance cannot parallel 
A fellow to it.' — Macbeth. 

Nature, in her most playful mood, never 
formed a more romantic spot than that which 
bursts upon the view on emerging from Dun- 
keld. The magnificent sight which this intro- 
duction to the Highlands presents, would well 
repay a man for the trouble of walking thither 
on foot from London to behold it. I can only 
deplore the inability of such a feeble pen as 
mine, to describe the wantonness with which the 
little gray-roofed town nestles amidst Nature's 
smiles ; the varied outlines of the darkly-wooded 
Craig-y-barns, rivalling in beauty Ovid's Aerial 
Alps, and cloud-topped Appenine ; or the Ma- 
jestic Tay, (Ecce Tiber,) flowing wide and tran- 
quil, through a succession of beautiful scenery, 



16 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

probably not to be equalled, certainly not to be 
surpassed in the three kingdoms. c Praising 
what is lost, makes the remembrance dear.' I 
will terminate this peroration in the words of 
an author, who has proclaimed the beauties of 
the Highlands in a way worthy of them, the 
author of the Highlands and Western Isles of 
Scotland : ! This/ says he, ' is the gate and 
portal whence bold Highland Caterans once 
issued in dirk and plaided hostility, sweeping 
our flocks and herds, and where (such are the 
changes of fashion) their Saxon foes now enter 
in peace, driving their barouches and gigs, and 
brandishing the pencil and memorandum book/ 
But my business, at present," is neither with 
Dunkeld nor its beauties ; I design to fill a page 
or two with a few words upon Scottish wed- 
dings ; and the little I have to say upon that 
subject, will afford no additional information to 
those who are already possessed of the slightest 
knowledge of such an agreeable affair. I never 
was but at one Highland wedding, and was 
then, as usual, too late, both for the ceremony, 



SCOTCH WEDDINGS. 17 

and the reception of the bride by her new pa- 
rents, at her future home. So that the world 
loses the benefit of my remarks upon the cus- 
tom of breaking bread over the bride's head, 
and the other incidental accompaniments attend- 
ant upon wedlock in the north. I may here 
mention, however, by way of 'parenthesis, that 
I once witnessed the return of a married couple 
to their new home, when the fair bride was 
seated in a cart, with a spinning wheel, deco- 
rated with ribbands, placed before her, and a 
washing tub at her side: these were hierogly- 
phics which needed no Belzoni to transcribe, 
nor Dr. Young to translate. They who ran 
might read, with as much facility as if the let- 
ters stared them in the face ; here were labour, 
industry, health, wealth, and what not more ; 
' I could stretch the line to the crack of doom/ 
I must frankly confess that the celebration 
of the wedding at which- 1 was present, offered 
a different scene, not to what I was led to ex- 
pect, but to what I in truth did expect. There 
was no mirth, bcjsterous and noisy, ( like ocean 



18 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

waves, when winds are piping loud ;' there was 
no rude jest that could call up a blush on the 
cheek of the most or least susceptible; but 
there was that among the guests that spoke 
urbanity, good humour, and good wishes to 
the young couple; they laughed the heart's 
laugh ; if their repartees wanted humour, they 
did not think so; and where their dancing 
fell off in grace, it increased in vigour; for 
be it known to those who might otherwise 
burst in ignorance, that a Highland reel is 
no sinecure; it peremptorily demands unwea- 
ried strength, and unceasing exertion ; I am 
not sure, but, inasmuch as I, a Sassenach, 
am concerned, that an hour's exercise on the 
Brixton wheel would be preferable, and prove 
less fatiguing than half an hour's continued trip- 
ping to the tune of Tullum Goram. The danc- 
ing commenced with a reel performed by the 
parents of the bridegroom, and the last men- 
tioned happy personage and his bride ; how I 
did wish for Washington Irving! Here was 
another hieroglyphic not to be* mistaken ; what 



SCOTCH WEDDINGS. 19 

a train of thought, and what a magnificent arti- 
cle might we not have had from Geoffrey Cray- 
on's graphic pen, with such a subject to go to 
work upon ! Could the war-dances of the Ame- 
rican Indians, or the symbolic measures of anti- 
quity, express any thing more forcibly than did 
the exquisitely beautiful sentiment contained 
under the national dance of my Scottish friends? 
Was not here one generation taking leave of 
another, not in the darkness of tears and sor- 
row, but amidst the sunshine of smiles and gai- 
ety, and that innocent mirth which the most 
cynical would not dare to carp at ! 

I will not attempt to describe the person of 
the bridegroom's father. I thought, when I 
first saw him, of what Garrick would have given 
for the sight of such a face, to have played old 
Adam by it ; or what a mine of gold the author 
of the Sketch Book might discover in the study 
of such a character, in eliciting from him his 
Reminiscences of London, upwards of half a 
century back, and in noting down the warmth 
with which this venerable persecutor of the red 
deer expatiates on field-sports. I verily believe 



20 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

his shot is as sure as that of Shakspeare's famed 
Douglas the Scot, Prince Henry's gallant ene- 
my, 'he that rides at high speed, and with his 
pistol kills a sparrow flying.' I may, however, 
speak of his hospitality, his good humour, and 
the excellence of his farintosh — they are all 
alike warm and enlivening ; his old age, like that 
of a literary person, is the evening of a fine day, 
and, in paying this tribute to the worth of my 
short known, but not less esteemed friend, John 
Creerar, I will conclude, by noticing, that the 
remembrance of the few happy hours spent at 
his son Charley's wedding, will be marked on 
' the tablet of my memory,' (there is the bard 
of Avon for it) albo lapide. 

One word more : in Scotland, a mutual ac- 
knowledgment, in the presence of witnesses, 
constitutes marriage, and Gretna Green has no 
privilege. In the well known case, where an 
earldom, and the fate of another wife and child 
depended upon the decision, an English court, 
having consulted the first legal authorities in 
Scotland, declared the marriage lawful, because 
the lady produced a letter, in which the gentle- 



SCOTCH WEDDINGS. 21 

man addressed her as his ' dear wife ;' and it 
was proved that they had afterwards been toge- 
ther long enough to render the consummation 
of the marriage probable. On this subject, the 
law of Scotland is certainly more liberal and 
humane than that of England ; the man who 
marries the mother of his children, legitimates 
those born before wedlock, and gives them equal 
rights to those born after. 

At penny weddings, the whole expense of the 
feast and fiddler is defrayed out of the contri- 
butions of the guests : every one pays for what 
he has, and, at the end, puts money into a dish, 
according to his inclination and ability. There 
is no doubt of the advantage and assistance 
which this system affords to young people of 
an inferior condition, but its observance is on 
the wane, and not held altogether reputable. 
There are few of the guests at a penny wedding 
who would decline to respond a hearty amen to 
the grace of old Pennant's Highland chieftain, 
1 Lord ! turn the world upside down, that Chris- 
tians may make bread of it.' 



AN EXECUTION IN PARIS. 



* By eight to-morrow thou must be made immortal.' 

MEASURE FOR MEASURE, 



25 



AN EXECUTION IN PARIS. 



* By eight to-morrow thou must be made immortal/ 

MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 

Dampier, in noticing the little feet of the la- 
dies of the celestial empire, quaintly remarks, 
6 They,' (the ladies in question,) c seldom stir 
abroad, and one would be apt to think that, as 
some have conjectured, their keeping up their 
fondness for this fashion were a stratagem of 
the men's, to keep them from gossiping and 
gadding about, and confine them at home.' I 
never stumble upon this passage of the worthy 
Buccaneer, without wishing that the friends of 
the Parisian ladies would either advise them to 
refrain from the custom of honouring execu- 
tions with their presence, or introduce the 
fashion of little feet to ' keep them from gossip- 
ing and gadding about.' I once had ocular 
c 



26 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

demonstration of this penchant of the French 
ladies for such disgusting exhibitions, on one 
day, coming from the Cour Royale, which I 
was in the habit of attending, not only for the 
sake of listening to, and deriving amusement 
and instruction from the pleadings of the advo- 
cates, but also that I might accustom myself to 
the various provincial dialects, from the shib- 
boleth of the Faubourg St. Antoine to the pa- 
tois of the Bretagne and the greek of the Mar- 
seillois; and I advise every English stranger 
who is desirous of attaining a thorough know- 
ledge of the French tongue, to take his lessons, 
as I did, from the proceedings of the chambers 
of correctional police ; he will find it infinitely 
preferable to the usually recommended course 
of visiting the theatres, (they have no Emerys 
nor Rayners,) and his stock of knowledge will 
obtain a greater increase by attending to the 
responses of a French witness than by listening 
to the futile attempt at provincial dialect by any 
artist on the stage ; always excepting Odry, on 
whom an English public will soon have it in 



AN EXECUTION IN PARIS. 27 

their power to pass sentence, and presuming 
that the student has somewhat more than a 
superficial knowledge of the tongue he wishes 
to master, before he attempts to pursue the 
windings of a judicial investigation. As I de- 
scended the broad flight of steps that leads 
from the Palais de Justice to the spacious court 
yard below, I became entangled in a dense 
crowd, from which I found extrication impos- 
sible till I had reached the fountain in the Place 
du Chatelet. As soon as I had escaped from 
the pressure of the throng, I sought a place of 
security, and was in a short time acquainted 
with the cause of such a multitude being col- 
lected : an execution was about to take place, 
and of all such scenes, this must have been the 
most dreadful, — it was the execution of a mo- 
ther and son ; the former was sixty-five years 
of age, and the latter but twenty ^four ;— they 
were convicted of the crime of having murdered 
an infirm woman of eighty. The Place du Cha- 
telet is midway between the Conciergerie, to 
which the criminals had been that morning 
c2 



28 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

brought from Bicetre, and the Place du Greve, 
where they were to suffer. By the time the 
procession appeared on the bridge, I had be- 
come surrounded by as great a crowd as that I 
had fallen into on leaving the Palace de Justice. 
The prisoners were both seated in one cart, 
with their backs to the horses, and a priest at 
the side of each ; the vehicle was preceded and 
followed by a detachment of the gendarmerie, 
the ' swallows of the guillotine,' whom I have 
mentioned in my article on Vidoc. The son 
sat near the horses ; his appearance was de- 
jected in the extreme : despair and terror had 
lent a dreadfully wild expression to his features, 
and he occasionally put his hand to his brow, 
as if to dash off the clammy drops that started 
on his forehead ; and then applied both hands 
to his throat, as if he were gasping for that 
breath which he was about to lose for ever. 
His head sank on the priest's shoulders, and his 
whole frame seemed unnerved by utter debility. 
His aged mother, the partner of his crime, ap- 
peared, on the contrary, the picture of resolu- 



AN EXECUTION IN PARIS. 29 

tion and daring courage. ' Upon her eye-balls 
murderous tyranny sat in grim majesty, to fright 
the world.' Her grey hair, which had fallen 
from under her cap, and hung in matted locks 
about her face, heightened the Hecate expres- 
sion of her eyes, which flashed with vindictive 
glances on the multitude assembled to view her 
progress. As soon as the cart had passed, the 
rush of the throng swept me with it ; I was car- 
ried with the stream towards the spot where 
the world was finally to close on two wretched 
beings who had alike violated the laws of God 
and man, and was thus forced to witness an ex- 
hibition which I would otherwise have gladly 
escaped. On arriving at the foot of the scaf- 
fold, the old woman leaped boldly from the 
cart, hurriedly ascended the steps, and stood 
alone and unsupported on the platform ; but 
the son had not power to rise, terror had 
chaipjed him to his seat, and he was ultimately 
lifted from the cart, assisted up the steps, and 
placed by the side of his mother, near the ex- 
ecutioner. To the most aged was allotted the 



30 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

priority of undergoing the last penalty of the 
law ; she was bound — placed under the knife, 
— and was, in a moment, lifeless. As the wea- 
pon rapidly and obliquely descended ringing in 
the grooves, I was watching the effect of the 
sound on the other prisoner, whose back was 
turned to the sight ; I could only remark a 
slight tremor, and a convulsive rising of the 
shoulders ; but when a gendarme slightly 
touched him, to warn him that his time had 
come, he fell under the touch as if it had struck 
life from him ; and he was probably unconscious 
of the remaining part of the sacrifice ; his coat, 
which had been loosely thrown round his shoul- 
ders, was rudely torn from him, his shirt rent 
down, and he dragged to the knife by that hair 
which seemed to have been previously curled 
with the greatest attention to effect. From the 
time of the arrival of the cart at the foot of the 
scaffold till the striking off the son's head, ten 
minutes had not been consumed, and in less 
than ten more, the whole structure was taken 
to pieces, and the multitude dispersed. 



AN EXECUTION IN PARIS. 31 

The number of females present on this occa- 
sion was immense; they at least formed two 
thirds of the multitude, and evidently took the 
greatest interest in the whole affair ; they appa- 
rently considered it as a fete, and enjoyed it 
accordingly. Their dress, moreover, bespoke 
them as belonging, if not to the upper classes, 
at least to the middle rank of society ; certainly 
the lower orders did not predominate. — Vol- 
taire's assertion, that the French were a com- 
pound of the tyger and monkey, was never 
more forcibly illustrated than in the conduct of 
these females on such an awful occasion. As 
the cart passed to the place of execution, they 
assailed the son with every epithet of vitupera- 
tion afforded them by a copious vocabulary ; his 
features, distorted with terror, and his hands, 
compressed with agony, were subjects of ridi- 
cule; and their savage remarks ceased only 
when the unit of his life * had been withdrawn 
from the sum of human existence/ The un- 
yielding demeanour of his guilty mother was, 
on the other hand, received with marked appro- 



32 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

bation, and, as she occasionally, with convulsed 
features, and arms uplifted in the wild parox- 
ysm of insanity, turned round to revile the 
craven terror of her offspring, the applause from 
those of her own sex was redoubled, and re- 
peated at every frantic gesture of the exulting 
demoniac. I again assert that this want of feel- 
ing was not seen in the lower orders exclu- 
sively ; and that it is not confined to the lower 
orders alone, is proved by Morris in his Views 
of Modern France. He asked a lady in Paris, 
who was under twenty years of age, and the 
mother of three children, what made her so in- 
different to them, and unmoved by the adversity 
under which she was labouring? She replied, 
without hesitation, that she attributed it to the 
many scenes of horror which she had witnessed 
in Paris during the revolution, which had steeled 
her heart against the finer feelings, and ren- 
dered her proof against poverty, misery, and 
distress. She added that, when a child, she 
was often promised, as a reward for good beha- 
viour, to go and see the victims of political fury 



AN EXECUTION IN PARIS. 88 

guillotined, and had often witnessed the execu- 
tion of seventy or eighty in the short space of 
an hour; the young and old scrambling for 
places to see well, as if they had been at a play. 
She also observed, that to see two or three cart 
loads of dead and perfectly naked bodies go by 
her window, in the course of a morning, was 
very usual. 

Mr. Fox is reported to have said, in the House 
of Commons, c that among many evils arising 
from wars and revolutions, one much to be 
feared was, that the frequency of battles and 
massacres would by degrees weaken our sym- 
pathy for each other, and render us indifferent 
about the shedding of blood.' The preceding 
anecdote confirms the truth of this observation^ 
and shews that the British orator possessed a 
profound knowledge of human nature, and 
knew how to form a correct judgment of man. 

Executions in France are not events of fre- 
quent occurrence ; their code is less sanguinary 
than ours ; they do not, every session, condemn 
twenty or thirty unhappy wretches to death, 
c5 



34 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

and leave three-fourths of them to depend, 
almost with confidence, on a certain commuta- 
tion of the penalty. They seldom suffer but 
for assassination, and robbery attended with 
aggravated violence; and after their condem- 
nation, have three days to appeal to the Court 
of Cassation, to set aside the verdict ; this in- 
deed is a forlorn hope, it is throwing a straw to 
a drowning man, and few take advantage of the 
privilege but for the sake of the gloomy satisfac- 
tion of prolonging life for a few hours. In the 
days of the notorious Chauffeurs, the guillotine 
was often in request, and the execution of any 
of that dreadful tribe was attended by extra 
thousands, and considered as a fete par excel- 
lence. The Chauffeurs had acquired a name 
for dying boldly ; the toilet on the day of their 
death was a matter of importance, as they prided 
themselves on their Macheath air, and assump- 
tion of careless courage ; often walking to the 
axe with a flower negligently held between their 
teeth, and retained there long after the head 
had flown from their shoulders. Their appel- 



AN EXECUTION IN PAPvIS. 85 

lation of Chauffeurs was derived from their 
cruel practices ; they were professed burglars, 
(and, by the way, looked forward to the guil- 
lotine as the certain termination of their labours, 
as confidently as Mat o' the Mint did to the gal- 
lows, when he comforted his doomed captain 
with ' it's what we must all come to,') and were 
used to seize the inmates of the houses which 
they forcibly entered, and bake their feet before 
the fire in order to extort a confession of the 
place where treasure was supposed to be con- 
cealed. The crime was very common over the 
northern and western departments of France, 
and in the Netherlands. The Bold Turpin 
was in fact a Chaffeur, but he did not bake the 
feet of his victims ; he, with a greater share of 
attention to their personal comfort, quietly 
seated them on the fire, and gave them a prac- 
tical illustration of Guatimozin's bed of roses. 
From such a warm couch of repose I heartily 
wish all my readers free. 



MAYNOOTH. 



* They're sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.' 

HAMLET. 



MAYNOOTH. 



c They're sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.' 

HAMLET. 

On the 30th of May of the by-gone year of 
grace, 1827, I mounted the Liverpool coach, 
with the intention of visiting Dublin. At all 
seasons of the year I abominate an inside place ; 
a four-and-twenty hours' imprisonment, four- 
and-twenty times worse than the stocks ; not to 
mention the chance of amazingly-agreeable pas- 
sengers, — a lady who will have both windows 
up ; a gentleman who has been on very intimate 
terms with the brandy-bottle ; or that climax of 
horrors, a pet child. Then to hear your oppo- 
site companion, a robust youth, rising six feet 
two, declare that he must get out to stretch his 
legs, or suddenly discovering, that your neigh- 
bour must have been one of those of whom 



40 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

Casca so lovingly speaks in Julius Caesar. I 
am morally certain that the black hole at Cal- 
cutta was nothing to it. Now if an outside 
passenger be seated near the most important 
personage that the vehicle carries, he may book 
one pleasant companion without fear of disap- 
pointment ; for it is no difficult matter to dis- 
cover the weak side, the tender failings, in the 
character of an English stage-coachman. It 
is, generally, nothing more than praising his 
horses, his whip, his coat, or himself, occasional 
allusions to top-boots, with now and then a word 
on the noble art of self-defence, and ten to one 
but he becomes loquacious. There is no rule 
without an exception : my coachman was deaf 
to all these topics, and left me to derive what 
benefit I could from enjoying my own conver- 
sation. Here was .an anomaly; a whip who 
would not discourse upon horses! a jehu who 
was dumb upon every thing concerning New- 
market or Doncaster! Alas ! thus it is, — 
1 Agricolam laudat juris legumque peritus.' 

He had never read Horace ; but, he, neverthe- 



MAYNOOTH. 41 

less, experienced the feeling which the lawyer 
did; he was not in love, I am sure; he was not 
in debt, I believe ; but l he had a soul above 
his buttons ; ' he was weary of the toil that 
condemned him to go over the same fifty miles 
three hundred and sixty-five times during the 
year ; he was longing for the otium cum digni- 
tate ; he was sighing for five hundred per an- 
num, and — Paris ! He had spent ten days in 
the French capital, he liked the French people, 
(he ought to know something of them, since he 
dined every day at Harriet Dunn's, on the 
Boulevard Madeleine — a chop-house esta- 
blished for the express and sole accommodation 
of Messieurs les Anglais,) and he had no doubt 
but he should like the language, if he were only 
able to understand it. He grew eloquent on 
the subject of Burgundy; Q oh he did reverence 
Burgundy!' quoted Lord Byron, and actually 
intimated something about its ' sun-set glow.' 
I won his heart when he found I, too, had been 
in Paris ; we were bosom friends, almost boon 
companions, for, during the night, he offered 

J 



42 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

me his pipe, which he had been smoking for at 
least half an hour, and, having duly wiped the 
tube on the sleeve of his top covering, asked me 
if I would like to take a whiff. I declined the 
courteous invitation with suitable acknowledg- 
ments ; and, in return for the intended kind- 
ness, held out a cigar, which he discussed with 
all the ineffable delight appertaining to a lover 
of the leaf. 

6 Shall I not take my ease in mine inn?' said 
I, on retiring to my truckle bed with the hope 
of • steeping my senses in forgetfulness ; ' but 
the original occupiers of the tenement so forci- 
bly entered their protest against such a wished- 
for consummation, that, by heavens ! as poor 
Curran said on a similar occasion, and without 
the fear of the worthy licenser before his eyes, 
had they been unanimous, and all pulled one 
way, they must have brought me to the ground. 
A few* short hours, however, and I was on board 
the Britannia, a fine steamer, which, in a head 
wind, pitched and rolled like a porpoise, to the 
evident discomfiture of not a few of her passen- 



MAYNOOTH. 43 

gers, but which ultimately carried us with safety 
into Kingstown harbour, where lay some dozens 
of the coasting craft, carrying fruit and timber, 
i. e. potatoes and birch brooms. A car took 
me to Stephen's Green, and I hired a porter 
to carry my portmanteau a short distance, for 
which service he was, at his own request, to be 
remunerated with • a brace of threepences/ 

' Your honour's from over the water?' 

' I am that same.' 

' Welcome to Ireland ! Your honour 11 give 
me a taste of the whiskey, to drink your ho- 
nour's health, and a safe voyage back? I've 
not had my morning yet, agrah !' 

'Well, I've no objection in life to do that; 
but get on.' 

6 Oh ! to be sure. This is Sunday, your ho- 
nour.' 

' 1 know it.' 

' I was thinking I'd be going to mass ;' (very 
proper, said I ;) f and I'll want getting shaved ; 
and if your honour were to be giving me a shil- 
ling, I'll not have a farthing about me for the 
change.' 



44 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

c Well, you're welcome to the shilling, then, 
only let us make the best of our way out of this 
rain.' 

'Oh! long life and good luck to your ho- 
nour ! we'll get on fast enough now, at any rate" 

I say nothing of Dublin ; the subject would 
be as old as the hills : every one has seen or 
heard something of the Ballah-lean-Cliath, or 
the town on the fishing harbour ; its bank, its 
castle, and its college, its custom-house, its ca- 
thedral, and its monuments, the Anna Liffey, 
and the two canals, the Four Courts, and the 
broad quays. I pass all these, and come at 
once to Maynooth, one of the Irish lions, which 
is about eleven miles from Dublin, and a very 
pretty town withal. The road from the capital 
has peculiar beauties meeting the traveller at 
every step ; it lies through the Phoenix Park, 
the Strawberry Beds, Lucan, (near which is an 
excellent hotel and spa, greatly esteemed, and 
much frequented in summer,) and the hand- 
some town of Leixlip, which cannot fail to ex- 
cite the admiration of a stranger. This town 



MAYNOOTH. 45 

is on the Liffey, and is famous for the salmon 
leap near it, and for the very beautiful view 
which may be had from the bridge. The mag- 
nificent but neglected seat and demesne of the 
Duke of Leinster adjoins Maynooth, which lat- 
ter is chiefly celebrated for its elegant Roman 
Catholic college. 

To the said college I and a few friends pro- 
ceeded, and our repeated applications to what 
the Jupiter Tonnans of literature would have 
termed ' the frappant and tintinabulant appen- 
dages which decorated the ligneous barricado,' 
were answered by a good-humoured-looking 
Cerberus, the sleek guardian of the portal. 
We had, unfortunately, come on some saint's 
day, when admission to strangers was rigo- 
rously prohibited, a holiday which was observed 
by the students with a double portion of pray- 
ers and preaching, and a corresponding de- 
crease on their usual quantum of relaxation and 
exercise. The porter could only repeat his or- 
ders, he would have admitted us with all the 
pleasure in life, and, as we were strangers, all 



46 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

he could do would be to allow us to speak to 
Dane Dowly, who was then walking in the gar- 
den with a friend. — ( Which of them is the 
dean?' — 'The gentleman in black.' To the 
dean we despatched one of our party, as a de- 
putation, who stated our case and our wishes. 
The answer was courteous and gentlemanly ; we 
obtained unlimited permission to roam about 
the grounds, and over the building. The 
grounds possess no claim whatever to beauty ; 
rank weeds and undipped hedges flourish in 
admirable disorder ; and the living ornaments, 
the students, w T ho ( live and move and have their 
being' within their hallowed precincts, are in 
admirable keeping with every thing around 
them. No curious traveller need go farther 
than Maynooth for genuine specimens of the 
true brogueneer ; the dingy, ragged stuff gown 
often covers a costume whose intrinsic value 
may be something less than a half-crown ; while 
the unbraced hose and chaussures, which are 
actual libels upon shoes, give a cool and easy 
freedom to the figure of the wearers. The 



MAYNOOTH. 47 

students were perambulating the confined space 
allotted to them for exercise, perusing their 
well-thumbed breviaries in silence, and occa- 
sionally gazing round them with an abstracted, 
listless, melancholy air. On certain festivals 
they are prohibited speaking to each other, 
even at meals, and are thus deprived of the en- 
joyments of social intercourse — of those intel- 
lectual treats, every one of which w r e remember 
as the c feast of reason and the flow of soul.' 
Bodily exercise is at all times limited to a steady 
walk : any thing beyond that one solid pace, 
would heap coals of living fire on the head of 
the luckless wight who should so far transgress 
as to indulge in the extravagance of a run. Ex- 
- cepting some few melancholy-looking sentiment- 
alists, however, they all bore the rude impress 
of ruddy health: Lady Morgan might select 
many a hero from among them, for there she 
would find the points which are so prominent 
in all her favourites, — the square shoulders and 
expanded chest ; the light curls and the laugh- 
ter-loving eye, ill concealed under the outward 



48 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

show of devotion and self-mortification. I may 
add, that the sight of a mob cap on the head 
(or the head without the cap) of one of the 
daughters of the green isle, within the gates of 
the college, would be such a scandal, as nothing 
less than the special favour of Old Infallibility 
himself could wipe away. My limits will allow 
me to say but little more, and that little shall 
be dedicated to the kitchen. It is said, that 
the pious hawkers of Constantinople solemnly 
perambulate the streets of that capital, exclaim- 
ing, ' In the name of the prophet — Figs !' It is 
no less true, that in the spacious kitchen of 
Maynooth College, is a human being ' begrimed, 
besooted, and bedevilled,' turning the spits in 
the name of the L — d. This apology for the 
genuine tourne-broche is seated on an emi- 
nence, within a recess between the two broad 
fire-places, (at which some sixty joints of meat 
are used to look provokingly inviting,) repeat- 
ing aves and credos, and paters, with his greasy 
missal in one hand, while the other performs its 
allotted duty; there he sits in the dirty mockery 



MAYNOOTH. 49 

of prayer, the paters dropping from his lips, as 
the juice drops from the fattened joints; the 
aves lingering on his tongue, as his hungry 
gaze gloats on the rich fare, and the excess of 
devotion, and the excess of appetite, raising, 
the one, water to his eyes — the other, to his 
mouth ; and as the rich perfumes, rivalling in 
odour the spices of Araby the blest, wafted 
themselves in savoury gales to his olfactory 
nerves, then might the fire be said to glitter 



-in each eye; 



For two living coals were the symbols ; 
His teeth were calcined, and his tongue was so dry. 
It rattled against them, as though you should try 

To play the piano in thimbles. 



THE 



DUKE D'ANGOULEME'S 
RETURN FROM SPAIN. 



u l Let's to the capitol ; 
And carry with us ears and eyes for the time, 
But hearts for the event. 5 coriolanus. 



d2 



DO 



THE DUKE D' ANGOULEME'S 
RETURN FROM SPAIN. 



-' Let's to the capitol ; 



And carry with us ears and eyes for the time, 
But hearts for the event/ coriolanus. 

Of the many fetes with which the French peo- 
ple had been amused, even to satiety, few had 
so powerfully interested them as the return of 
the Duke d' Angouleme to Paris, at the head 
of the French army. The spectacle promised 
to be a novel one, and novelty, as every one 
knows, is * the god of their idolatry ;' it was, 
moreover, military, and as our neighbours form 
essentially a military nation, the show promised 
to be popular, with those who felt at all inclined 
to seek the ' bubble reputation' at the mouth of 
a four-and-twenty-pounder ; and not less po- 
pular did it promise to be with the tonsured 



54 THF DUKE D* ANGOULEMe's 

gentry who held ' the withering hand of bigot 
power' over the fairest land that lies smiling 
under our northern sun. In short, all classes 
seemed willing to be pleased, from the peer to 
the veriest badaud that ever spent three fourths 
of his existence in sight-hunting; from the 
duchess to the oldest devote that ever slum- 
bered under the influence of a lengthy extem- 
pore, from the would-be Bourdaloues of the 
parish of St. Roche. It was to be a fete in 
every sense of the word : business was to be 
suspended, and pleasure to take its place ; the 
Stock Exchange was to be as if it had never 
been, and even Galignani's, the resource of all 
spleen-devoured Englishmen, was to be par- 
tially closed. Thus driven alike from the wor- 
thy society of money-agents, and the reading 
community of the Rue Vivienne, we had no- 
thing left but to await the day, and hope for 
the luxury of a bright sun and dry streets.— 
Vain hope ! the eventful day was ushered in 
by as copious a shower as could possibly be 
desired by the most enthusiastic worshipper of 



RETURN FROM SPAIN* 55 

St. Swithin, or the most violent hater of the 
Bourbons; it came down straight and heavy, 
and looked as if it intended to do so for the 
next six weeks at least. I, however, sallied 
forth with a young Frenchman, resolved to 
contend with the fretful element, and to strive, 
in our 



; little world of man, to outscorn 



The to-and-fro conflicting wind and rain.' 

We proceeded towards the Place Louis XV ., 
but, on our arrival there, found nothing but 
foul weather 9 and a few members of the na- 
tional guard wet to the skin. It would have 
been fruitless to have € taxed the elements with 
unkindness' or to have blamed the thunder that 
threatened to { strike flat the thick rotundity 
of the world ;' no ; we, like Lear, were the pat- 
terns of all patience, and, under the warm co- 
verts of Spanish cloaks, dared the elements to 
do their worst. — The troops, to whom it had 
been allotted to keep the ground, assembled in 
silence — wet, dirty, and dreary; their very trum- 
pets, after a while, sounded with long, melan- 



i 



56 THE DUKE D' ANGOULEMe's 

choly blasts, winding mournfully through the 
avenues of the Champs Elysees, and affording 
horrid discord to every legitimate descendant 
of Sherwood Loeksley, and to every warm ad- 
mirer of the merry notes that used to dance 
wildly through the forests of broad England, 
The troops, as I have said, assembled slowly, 
and took up their various positions with visible 
reluctance, and the spectators seemed to ga- 
ther with equal tardiness ; the rain continued 
to fall in torrents, and damped the energies of 
almost every one who had previously deter- 
mined to brave all inconvenience rather than 
miss a sight which might never again be offered 
to the wondering gaze of the good people of 
Paris; but, fortunately, at midday, (oh! what 
an auspicious omen to the lovers of the marvel- 
lous,) at twelve at noon, the sun, which had 
been hitherto shrouded in a veil of envious 
clouds, burst forth in all the cloudless splendour 
of the god of day, precisely at the moment that 
the Duke d' Angouleme reached the gates of 
Paris, (the Barriere de 1' Etoile,) and gladdened 



RETURN FROM SPAIN. 57 

the hearts of his uncle's subjects by his own 
presence and that of the long-desired fountain 
of light. 

The congratulations of the King's loyal sub- 
jects in Paris were paid to the hero by the 
mayor of one of the arondissemens, and great 
was the adulation, and manifold the encomiums 
showered on the army who had followed the 
prince to Spain, and who had marched so many 
miles upon her peaceful bosom : 

e Frighting her pale-fac'd villagers with war, 
And ostentation of despised arms !' 

An advanced guard, immediately preceding the 
royal generalissimo and his staff, approached 
from the Champs Elysees and entered the gar- 
den of the Tuileries ; I expected, on the prince's 
appearance, to hear the populace amaze the 
welkin with their noisy shouts, but, saving a 
few old women, and some half-dozen agents of 
police, ' no joyful tongue gave him his welcome 
home.' This want of honest warmth seemed to 
affect the duke but little ; he sat stooping on 

his charger, and any thing but a hero in his 

d5 



58 THE DUKE d' ANGOULEMe's 

appearance, laughing and conversing with the 
generals who surrounded him, and occasionally 
acknowledging, by a sharp, familiar nod, the 
lusty endeavours of the mouchards to inspire 
the people with loyalty, and the obstreperous 
mirth of the few apprentice boys who threw up 
their greasy caps, and cried, c God bless the 
duke!' Though the prince entered Paris at 
the head of a force amounting, I believe, to 
nearly 30,000 men, not 5,000 of them were of 
that army who had been under his command in 
Spain : the garrisons of Paris, Versailles, and 
Nantes, were drained to grace his triumph, and 
throw additional lustre on his ovation ; the can- 
non and artillery-men both bore an appearance 
of strength and neatness about them, that 
totally belied the supposition of their having 
been engaged in the strife of war, and the 
colours of the French and Swiss Guards bellied 
to the wind, without a rent on their surface, or 
a spot on their clear white to stain the emble- 
matic purity of the Bourbons, The corps of 
Pompiers too, instead of coming from Spain, 



RETURN FROM SPAIN. 59 

had evidently marched no greater distance than 
from their stations in and about Paris; their 
bright brass helmets gleamed in the sunshine, 
as dazzling as if they had but just left the hands 
of the manufacturer; and the dragoons from 
Versailles curvetted and caracolled in all the 
pride and glory of green and crimson, epau- 
lettes, and leopard skin. Amid all this para- 
phernalia, weakening the eyes and astounding 
the senses, there was one thing, and but one 
thing, worth seeing ; it was ^the steady quiet 
march of the chosen few who had really been 
engaged in deadly contest with the swarthy 
Iberian and savage Guerilla ; their advance was 
manly, slow, and unassuming; their sun-em- 
browned features, their tattered uniforms, their 
broken caps, and a general appearance of 
fatigue, told a long tale of weariness ; their 
complexions, in ' the shadowed livery of the 
burnished sun,' spoke of toil, and watching, and 
strife. Their bursting eyes looked as if they 
had not often been closed in sleep ; but they 
now seemed to frighten up and sparkle with 



60 THE DUKE D' ANGOULEMe's 

inward delight as they gazed at the crowds who 
were enthusiastic in their admiration, and warm 
in their notes of welcome. I shall never forget 
the shouts that burst, as if at one impulse, from 
the people, when they beheld the remains of 
the colours hanging in shreds from the staff, 
and proudly dancing their slashed remnants in 
the wind, as though they too partook in the 
general exultation. No music accompanied the 
march of the little band, the applause of their 
fellow-countrymen was sufficiently exciting, their 
shouts formed the only harmony attendant on 
their progress, and they were honest ones, and 
had been hardly earned by the rough warriors, 
from whom war and her dread companions had 
taken the outward shew of smooth civility. I 
and my friend, in common with many others, 
cared very little for the remaining part of the 
procession, as it consisted of nothing more than 
a continued pouring-in of troops, one regiment 
succeeding another, in monotonous order, till 
the whole had defiled. We accordingly made 
our way towards the Quai des Tuileries, with 



RETURN FROM SPAIN. 61 

the intention of entering the gardens at the little 
gate, near the corps de garde, and witnessing 
the public reception of the duke, by the king, 
his uncle ; but the people had flocked in such 
multitudes round this entrance, that we found 
ingress impossible, and as we observed many 
attempting to scale the walls, I resolved (my 
companion declining it,) to do the same ; I ac- 
cordingly divested myself of my cloak, and sur- 
rendered it to his keeping, and, with the assist- 
ance of one or two beneath me, managed to 
get hold of the summit, which I should have 
speedily cleared, but for a tremendous blow 
which I received across the knuckles from the 
stock of a gun, and which, depriving my hand 
of all power, caused me to drop to the ground. 
I now, for the first time, remarked, that the 
sentinels on the river side had been at least 
quintupled, and that all attempts to enter the 
gardens, except by the proper gates, must prove 
unavailing ; I was about to try the latter means 
once more, when my attention was attracted by 
a struggle between a soldier on duty and a 



62 THE DUKE D* ANGOULEME's 

young man who had reached, and was then 
standing on the top of the wall, and from which 
he was shortly after thrown down ; enraged at 
his defeat, he took up a stone and threw it at 
the sentinel, but it fortunately missed him ; he 
then renewed his attempt to get over the bar- 
rier, but a blow across the hand, as soon as it 
touched the summit, again forced him down; 
he now assailed the soldier with every low epi- 
thet of abuse, of which the latter affected to 
take little notice, till he was styled with the re- 
proachful terms of blanc bee (smooth chin,) and 
recruit, words conveying mortal offence, when 
addressed to a young French soldier ; his cheeks 
did not crimson with the ruddy impress of ho- 
nest indignation, he turned deadly pale, and 
trembled violently; his comrades advised him 
to retire from that side of the terrace, but he 
continued standing, with his eyes fixed, like a 
statue's, on the man, who was still directing a 
torrent of vituperation against him, his musket 
gradually descended, till it rested on the wall, 
which was about breast high; the other party 



RETURN FROM SPAIN. 63 

seemed to notice the movement, and retired a 
few paces, taking the arm of a female, who was 
afterwards said to be his sister ; the soldier pro- 
bably thought he was about to withdraw, and I 
firmly believe was in the act of recovering his 
arms, when the word ' recruit/ again contemp- 
tuously uttered, so goaded him on to despera- 
tion, that he discharged his piece, and with a 
too fatal effect; — the young man gave one 
dreadful shriek, sprang at least three feet in 
the air, and fell flat, dead, on his face : he was 
shot right through the temple. A loud yell 
from the crowd, and a simultaneous rush to the 
walls, alarmed the guard, they knew not which 
to repel first, and, in the general confusion, I 
got over. The sentinel, who had fired, fled to 
his box for protection, and with his unloaded 
piece, kept the enraged multitude at bay till a 
corporal and four men arrived to place him 
under arrest, and he was led away amidst the 
execrations of a crowd eager to tear him to 
pieces. In the mean time, the unfortunate 
cause of all this turmoil was placed against the 



64 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

wall, and surrounded by a number of mounted 
gens-d'armes, who would not allow his wound 
to be examined, till the arrival of the com- 
missary of police, and as this did not take 
place till half an hour had elapsed, any chance 
that might have existed for saving his life was 
entirely thrown away. The public are ac- 
quainted with the sequel : there was a trial, at 
least it was called so, and the verdict was jus- 
tifiable homicide, or something to that purpose, 
with a clause, hinting the praise due to a soldier 
who knew how to defend his post with vigour. 
The feelings of the parents were soothed by 
a pension of, I think, 1000 francs (£40). 



THE PALAIS ROYAL. 



: If thou hat'st 



Curses, stay not; fly while thou'rt blessed and free.' 

TIMON OF ATHENS. 



67 



THE PALAIS ROYAL. 



•Ifthouhat'st 



Curses, stay not; fly while thou'rt blessed and free/ 

TIMON OF ATHENS. 

The Palais Royal of Paris, which contains 
much that affords amusement, but more that 
excites disgust, was commenced by Cardinal 
Richelieu, when in the full-blown plenitude of 
his power* and when his arrogance ruled over 
the mildest and most timid monarch that ever 
sat on the throne of Hugues Capet. It was 
then styled the Palais Cardinal, and was the 
resort of all the learned and noble men of 
Europe, who flocked thither to pay homage 
to its crafty master, ' the old cat of Narbonne.' 
There, amidst the revelry of fetes and the ex- 
citements of pleasure, many a plan was pro- 
jected that had for its basis the aggrandisement 



68 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

of its author, and the degradation of that au- 
thor's sovereign, and many an act signed that 
condemned to an ignominious death the per- 
sonal friends of Louis XIII., who had not suf- 
ficient power of mind to stand up against the 
superior intellect of his minister, and assume to 
himself the right of life and death over his own 
subjects. Long did the * king s king (another 
of Richelieu's surnames) enjoy, like Wolsey, 
the royal graces showered on him daily, and, 
unlike Wolsey, continued in the almost unin- 
terrupted enjoyment of them till death. The 
latter died a prisoner, disgraced and deserted ; 
the former sank into the arms of the destroyer, 
with Louis attendant at his side, administering 
the remedies ordered by the faculty ; and, as 
the good monarch charitably supposed, sooth- 
ing the last moments of his servant by repeated 
assurances of unalterable esteem ; it is said, the 
ambitious prelate smiled as he witnessed the 
sway which even in utter helplessness he held 
over his forgiven and injured master. At one 
period when Richelieu's star was low in the as- 



THE PALAIS ROYAL. 69 

cendant, and his enemies had succeeded in 
awakening the sovereign to some sense of his 
situation, the cardinal found himself compelled 
to retire from office, and with absolute insolence 
prayed the king to accept, as a pure gift, the 
Palais which he had erected at his sole ex- 
pense; Louis, in his amazement, consented, 
and, when it was subsequently inhabited by his 
consort, Anne of Austria, and Louis XIV. then 
in his minority, it lost its distinguishing appel- 
lation of Palais Cardinal, and was honoured 
with that of Palais Royal. It descended to 
the brother of he Grand Monarque, and at 
length became the property of Philip, the infa- 
mous Duke of Orleans, by whom it was consi- 
derably embellished and enlarged ; it is now 
occupied by the present highly popular Duke 
of Orleans. The public are well acquainted 
with the scenes which rendered this building 
notorious during the reign of terror, the ex- 
cesses which M. Egalite sanctioned, and the 
savage barbarity which characterised the crowds 
whom his treachery misled. I may as well no- 
tice here, that in all works purporting to give 



70 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

histories or descriptions of the French revolu- 
tion, we are surfeited with accounts of the san- 
guinary enormities of the sans-culottes and the 
crimes of the populace, while we remain unin- 
formed of the deep depravity and iniquity of the 
aristocracy that had for ages ' been poisoning the 
soil with their vices, and at last reaped the har- 
vest that might have been expected from their 
toils/ The bloody deeds of a day are blazoned 
forth for public execration, while the veil of 
oblivion is thrown over the privileged classes 
and their unutterable vices, ("shrouded from 
exposure only by their enormity,") which at 
length brought down a deluge of blood on the 
land cursed and polluted by such iniquities. 
Well may it be supposed that the parc-au-cerf 
of that right legitimate Louis XV., was suffi- 
cient alone to raise up a whole nation of regi- 
cides, and to make every father and husband 
an assassin, whose soul was not sufficiently base 
to qualify him for a pander *. There are but 

* See an able paper, in one of the early numbers of the 
Westminster Review, on the Memoirs of the Duchess of 
Orleans. 



THE PALAIS ROYAL. 71 

few events of greater importance among the 
memorabilia of the Palais Royal than the mur? 
der of poor Michel Lepeletier, one among the 
few who voted conscientiously for the death of 
Louis XVI. : on the evening of the last day of 
the king's trial, Lepeletier was dining at le cafe 
Fevrier, when he was accosted by a man of the 
name of Paris, who asked him if his name were 
Lepeletier ; on being answered in the affirma- 
tive, € then/ said Paris, ' you were concerned 
in the king's trial ; for what did you vote V — ' For 
death V replied Lepeletier, c I believed him 
guilty, and recorded my vote against him.' Pa- 
ris instantly drew forth a concealed dagger, and 
stabbed him to the heart, exclaiming, ' Villain ! 
receive thy reward!' Lepeletier was only in 
the thirty-second year of his age, when he thus 
fell a victim to his zeal in the cause of liberty. 

In these days, when every one has seen Paris, 
it would be a work of supererogation to describe 
its chief ornament, the Palais Royal, with its jet 
tVeau in the form of a fleur-de-lis, its one hun- 
dred and eighty arcades, its jewellers, tailors, 



72 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

shoemakers, money-changers, booksellers, mil- 
liners, grisettes, and cyprians; here may be 
found all that the eye can seek after, or the 
heart wish for ; silks from Smyrna, and spices 
from Amboyna ; cigars from the Havannah, and 
dates from Lasha; diamonds from Golconda, 
rubies from Brazil, turquoises from Siberia and 
Teheran, and the genuine eau de Cologne from 
the manufactory of Jean Marie Farina, Yez- 
dikhaust is not more famous for its bread, 
Sheeraz for its wine, nor Yezd for the bright 
eyes of Nature's best gift, than is the Palais 
Royal for all the luxuries that gold can pur- 
chase; Rocknabad cannot boast a stream so 
clear as the fontaine, nor Mosellay a bower so 
sweet as the pavilion ; Istambol affords no bet- 
ter sherbet, nor does Lebanon offer more 
agreeable ices. The chief and best known at- 
traction of this temple of delights is Very's re- 
staurant, the proprietor of which is the prince of 
cooks, who would have proved a treasure to 
Apicius, who is not second even to the great 
Vatel, and who, compared w T ith Ude, is ( Ossa 



THE PALAIS ROYAL. 73 

to a wart.' The life of the first of the Verys 
was exhausted in inventing new dishes and 
stimulants to enjoy them ; he, by the mysteries 
of his art, gave renewed vigour to the fainting 
appetite, and added many an exquisite enjoy- 
ment before unknown to the most refined vo- 
luptuary; with meagre materials he effected 
mighty things, he could almost satisfy hunger 
through the sense of smelling, and make his 
guests live, like the birds of Paradise, upon the 
ethereal breath of flowers. It is true he could 
not set before them the tongues of flamingoes, 
(the favourite dish of Apicius,) the roasted 
crane of Nassidienus, or combs torn from the 
living cock, (one of the most savoury repasts of 
that great glutton, Heliogabalus,) but he could 
treat their palate with macaroni au parmesan, 
cutlets in curl paper, and the most delicious 
geese that ever died with the liver complaint. 
Pliny tells us that the Romans were acquainted 
with fifty different ways of cooking pork; but this 
boast of Rome sinks into insignificance, when 
we think of the land that has taught us six hun- 
E 



74 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

dred and eighty-five ways to dress eggs ! What 
were their heads of ostriches to Very's pate of 
larks ; their storks, their tongues of nightin- 
gales, their puppy dogs, and camels' udders, to 
the combination of delicacies which may be dis- 
covered in Perigord pies ! pies which, like chro- 
nometers, are warranted to go well in all climates ; 
may be sent to the north pole, and return all the 
better for the voyage ; or may be first cut at 
Valparaiso, again partaken of at Trinidad, once 
more tasted at the Azores, and at length con- 
sumed in London. Let us then hear no more 
of scurvy, and less of sauer-krout ; let us eat 
and be thankful, and no longer wonder at the 
inscription on the tomb of the immortal cook at 
Montmartre, which tells us that his whole life 
was consecrated to the useful arts! Were I 
not afraid of wearying the gentle reader, (hea- 
ven bless the days of the Grandisons, when no- 
vels were in fifteen volumes !) I would treat him 
with a phillippic against tea, tell him how I hate 
the morning and evening repast of scandal juice 
avid toast, how I abominate — 

' Te veniente die, te decedente.' 



THE PALAIS ROYAL. 75 

But jam satis of Very, though, as Hood says, 
there is no satis to his jams, and let us look in 
at 253 ; I am not sure that this number should 
not be corrected to 213, but the difference is but 
of trifling import ; at one of these numbers is 
the principal gambling house of the Palais ; 
there are two hazard-rooms, one for roulette, 
the other for rouge etnoir; around the table 
dedicated to the latter game, was seated a min- 
gled company of old and young of either sex ; 
the majority well dressed, and, I must confess, 
to all appearance, well pleased ; a few had cards 
before them, on which they pricked the chances, 
and calculated on their play accordingly. That 
a punter does not win his first stake, is, of 
course, an equal bet ; and that he does not win 
six successive times, is sixty-three to one, ac- 
cording to the table of odds : yet I saw a pun- 
ter win, by varying the colour, twelve or thirteen 
times without interruption, and I well recollect, 
that by his astonishing success, I was induced 
to think I might escape fortune's daughter with 
the same luck that he did ; and it was not until 
e2 



76 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

I had lost five napoleons that I began to disco- 
ver that I was a tyro in the gamester's arith- 
metic, and to imagine that I had paid quite 
sufficient for my first lesson. What envy and 
malice came over me as I watched the successful 
player sweeping his winnings into a small can- 
vass bag, and tempting fortune again and again, 
without meeting a repulse to his temerity: I 
sighed, and walked towards the roulette table, 
at which I remained about half an hour, amused 
with looking on, and remarking the various 
changes of countenance, as the numbers proved 
favourable or adverse; I then asked for my 
hat, and descended the well-worn staircase, 
heartily regretting (horresco ref evens) the broad 
gold pieces I had left behind me. I shortly 
after entered the Milles Colonnes, capped to 
the limonadieve, received one of her sweetest 
smiles in return, took an ice, and again made my 
way into the garden, threaded its mazes, think- 
ing unutterable things, and was at last reduced 
to gaze at Ursa Major, and look on Orion's 
Belt, (the brightest ornament in a winter's sky,) 



THE PALAIS ROYAL. 77 

for want of thought. I had not been five mi- 
nutes thus engaged, and was leaning against 
the palisade, near the cannon which, on every 
bright day, at noon, is fired by the rays of the 
sun, when the near report of a pistol created 
some alarm amongst those who were walking 
about the spot where I stood : we ran towards 
the place from whence the noise came, and 
found a man weltering in his blood ; his hat lay 
at a small distance from him ; his head, as he 
fell, had struck against the marble circle of the 
basin ; and his hand grasped a morocco pocket- 
book with gold clasps, and a small canvass bag. 
I assisted those who stood near the body to re- 
move it towards the Galerie de Bois, and I shall 
never forget the sensation I experienced when, 
on looking at the face, I discovered the features 
of the successful gamester ; successful he had 
been while I was in the room : the canvass bag 
emptied of its contents, and his present condi- 
tion told too plainly how the game had gone 
after I left. There was nothing in the appear- 
ance of the suicide that denoted penury or un- 



78 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

happiness. His costume was that of a retired 
officer ; a blue military undress frock, with the 
ribband and cross of the legion of honour ap- 
pending to a button hole ; a hat a la Bolivar ; 
tight black pantaloons ; hessians ; a riding whip 
mounted in gold, with an amber head ; a pair 
of kid gloves, on which, with some surprise, I 
remarked the word ' Dundee ;' and white cravat 
of batiste, marked A. A. V. He was of that 
age at which any one might reasonably suppose 
he was married ; or he might have a mother or 
sister, or some aged relative depending on him 
for support. Alas ! where was their hope now? 
where was the husband and father ? where was 
the son, the brother, the benefactor, at whose 
coming the old had wept, and the young smiled? 
where was the prop of age, the hope of youth, 
where the delight of both ? — Dead ! and by his 
own hand ; an assassin, the worst of murderers, 
for he had done that which left no time for re- 
pentance ; he had forgotten that the Everlast- 
ing had fixed ( his canon against self-slaughter,' 
and he had rushed with all his sins upon his head 



THE PALAIS ROYAL. 79 

into the presence of an offended Deity ! The 
body was removed, by order of the commissary 
of police, to La Morgue, and was owned the 
day after by some relative, I think, a cousin. 

I remember a story was in circulation at this 
time concerning a soldier of the king's body 
guard, (every member of which is noble,) who, 
besides immense gains, had broken the bank at 
Frescati's, in the Rue de Richelieu, three times 
in one week. Such unusual good fortune on 
the part of the ' man at arms ' had excited great 
rancour in the breasts of the proprietors of the 
table, and they determined to do all they could, 
not only to regain possession of the sums they 
had lost, but also to ruin him who had won 
them. It happened that the young life-guards- 
man was ordered to Lyons, on which orders 
coming to the ears of the great men of Frescati's, 
they resolved to send down a certain number of 
agents to that city, to establish a hazard-table 
and decoy their intended victim to his ruin. The 
success of their plans exceeded their hopes ; he 
played, lost his winnings, borrowed from his 



80 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

friends, and lost ; and at length made free with 
the money which belonged to the regiment, and 
passed through his hands; this soon went too. 
He awoke to the full sense of his situation ; to 
the loss of his honour ; and to his unworthiness 
of wearing the maiden sword he had never 
fleshed. Ashamed to appear before his supe- 
riors, and unable to account, in a satisfactory 
way, for the deficiencies in the caisse of his bro- 
ther soldiers, he died the gamester's death, by 
shooting himself in a field near Lyons, on the 
very morning he was to have been married to a 
young lady, who, when the dreadful event was 
communicated to her, lost her senses, and died 
with her reason wrecked, at her father's resi- 
dence, near Bordeaux. 

This is a dark picture, and happy it is that 
its shades are relieved by tints of greater bright- 
ness : the gaming tables are patronised by go- 
vernment ; their agents are in the pay of the 
legislature ; the concern is farmed out, is sown 
and grown, and flourishes under the auspices 
of those who are ' chiefs in the land,' and who 



THE PALAIS ROYAL. 81 

are themselves voluntary victims to the Levi- 
athan which they might render harmless, but 
which now destroys the repose of the innocent, 
and enables the guilty to defy the justice which 
should overtake crime. Let us take a picture 
of the Palais Royal in another point of view ; 
let us forget even Very's, the gambling-houses, 
and the lottery-offices ; and look at the many 
happy faces that traverse its boundary between 
the rise and set of sun ; the pretty grisettes, — 

' Rather eatable things, these grisettes, by the by V 

tripping with quick step and light heart, with 
their hair a la Grecque, and a dress that would 
shame the best attired woman in the three king- 
doms ; for it cannot be concealed that our fair 
sisters are far behind their Parisian friends in 
the art of setting off the person to the best ad- 
vantage; though, for our own side, we must 
claim precedence for our superiority in cutting 
a coat, or for our dexterity in shaping unmen- 
tionables, so as to express emphatically to the 

world that we have no license from the pope to 
e 5 



82 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

wear the thick part of the calf downwards . With 
all its drawbacks, who can help loving the fairy 
land of cookery and gourmandise, where the hea- 
vens rain baked meats, and larks fall from the 
sky ready roasted ? or, who amongst us would 
object to live in this — 



-' Land of Cocaigne, 



This Elysium of all that is fr land and nice, 

Where for hail they have bon-bons, and claret for rain, 

And the skaiters in winter show off on cream ice ?' 



FRENCH PRIESTS. 



: You 



Are led so grossly by this meddling priest, 
Dreading the curse that money may buy out. ? 

KING JOKNo 



85 



FRENCH PRIESTS. 



! You 



Are led so grossly by this meddling priest, 
Dreading the curse that money may buy out. 7 

KING JOHN. 

1 As sure as God is in Gloucestershire,* was a 
common proverb at that period when the abbey 
of Glastonbury flourished, the pride and model 
of all religious communities, and previous to 
the fatal hour when * gospel light first beamed 
from Boleyn's eyes.' In the halcyon days of 
the monks of Gloucestershire and Somerset- 
shire, when the scarlet lady of Babylon thun- 
dered forth her excommunications, and royalty 
itself quaked at them ; when this ter quaterque 
blessed land was overstocked with— 

* Happy convents bosomed deep in vines, 

Where slumbered abbots, purple as their wines ;' 



86 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES, 

when Baldwin Lepetteur was obliged, every 
Christmas Day, to perform before our lord the 
king, at Hemmingston Manor, a saltus, a suf- 
flatus, and a bumbulus, as John Tradescant, 
or old Stowe, or Camden, or Pennant, or some 
one of these British worthies says ; (I like to 
be particular about my authority for what I 
assert :) when friars, like Nicholas Breakspeare, 
of Abbot's Langley, reasonable souls! made 
the head of the church the boundary of their 
unambitious wishes, (for I take it for granted, 
as universally known, that Pope Adrian IV. 
was a no less important personage than Nick 
Breakspeare, of the brotherhood of St. Al- 
ban's ; that he first preached the gospel to the 
Norwegians, had his stirrup held by the Em- 
peror Frederic I., (the man preached humility!) 
and was at last choked, not by the dish which 
always agreed better with the palate of our first 
Henry, than it did with his constitution, — not 
by stewed lampreys ; nor by a grape-stone, as 
was the rosy-lipped Anacreon, — but by a fly, 
who most impiously dared to go on a voyage of 



FRENCH PRIESTS. 87 

discovery down his holiness's throat ;) in those 
days, when the sons of the church macerated 
themselves by long fastings, yet got pursy in 
spite of themselves ; when prayer and penance, 
instead of impressing on them the pale hue of 
the midnight student, lent them the bloated 
look of the just-brutalized sensualist; when, by 
paying the duty at the great custom-house of 
sin, a man might kill his father, mother, bro- 
ther, wife, or sister, for the trifle of ten-and- 
sixpence, (for the cost of the absolution was 
not greater ;) when a priest might keep his 
chere amie, and pay but half-a-guinea to ob- 
tain his dispensation for being irregular; when, 
to get a license to escape the tyranny of fasting- 
days, and indulge in flesh, at times prohibited, 
amounted to the sum of two pounds five shil- 
lings, being something more than four times 
the estimated value of a man's life ; when such 
fees of the pope's chancery were published by 
authority, and transmitted to posterity, as an 
indisputable proof of the much-vaunted wisdom 
of our ancestors ; when even cardinals, in con* 



88 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

clave, could not agree, nor be at peace till they 
had fought it out, but his eminence darkened 
his other eminence's day-lights, and then both 
their eminences indulged in the Cornish shrug, 
and claret flowed, and the fives ' cut and came 
again/ till one was compelled to cry, ' Hold, 
enough!' a la Jack Holt, and was i damned/ 
(as that not-fearing- Suppression- of -Vice -Soci- 
ety reprobate, Macbeth, says,) a la Shakspeare ; 
and when inkstands flew, and snuffer-stands 
followed, endangering the eyes and limbs and 
lives of the spiritual advisers of the Christian 
world; when, as I say, such scenes of unani- 
mity characterized the election of a servus-ser- 
vorum; when the private prayers of private 
confessors were the hopes of heirless husbands ; 
when the said private confessors were rectitude 
personified, and their penitents models of fide- 
lity; when the latter would have put to the 
blush all the Mrs. Potiphars in the world, from 
her of yore, to the pretty Miss M'Garraghan 
of our own days ; and when the former were 
very Josephs, with senses as obdurate as those 



H 



FRENCH PRIESTS. 89 

of that rock of adamant, the Maguire himself; 
when such a monster as the Tartuffe was as 
rare as the Leviathan of the deep, or the sea- 
serpent, his cousin from the New World ; when 
sparkling eyes, and lips made only to be kissed, 
were obstacles to the salvation of those who 
dared to look or cast a thought upon them ; 
when the tremendous power of a small number 
of men was upheld, by calling into requisition 
the good offices of the Duke of Exeter's daugh- 
ter and the scavenger's niece, or, to speak in 
more intelligible terms, the rack and the axe ; 
when, to have said that the pretensions of Mo- 
hammed were not more impious than those of 
the Roman pontiff, would have condemned the 
unhappy utterer of such an assertion to pro- 
longed torment in this life, and everlasting tor- 
ment in the dark hereafter ; when the misery 
and awful secrecy of the inquisition rewarded 
those who dared to prefer the splendid domi- 
nion of the Moorish sovereigns in Grenada to 
the bigotted, disgusting superstition of the 
Ferdinands and Charleses, et id genus omne ; 



90 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

when we were forbidden to remember that the 
prophet promised Paradise only to such as 
were strong in faith, while Pontifex Maximus 
1 sold heaven to the highest bidder, and fixed 
a price on the pains of hell ;' and, finally, with 
all these whens before us, and remembering 
that when the cowl and sandals, the rosary and 
missal, Franciscans and Capuchins, friars white, 
black, and gray, ' with all their trumpery,' {quasi 
tromperie,) had overrun the west of Europe, 
and had nowhere found more comfortable quar- 
ters than those they had met with in the west of 
England, can we wonder that the grace of Pro- 
vidence was over Christian Europe in general, 
and over sweet Gloucestershire in particular? 

' Voici l'heure du rendezvous 
Mais nos pretres s'endorment tous. 
Ah ! maudit soit notre cure ! 

Je vais, sacristie ! 

Manquer ma parti e, 
Jeanne est pr&te et le vin tird, 
Ita missa est monsieur le cure* V 

lie missa est ; and let us now, not forgetting 

the anchorite, his filberts, his water, and his 



FRENCH PRIESTS. 91 

bed of rushes — let us now see if the powdered 
gallant abbes of the ancient regime were a jot 
better than the solitaires of the olden time— « 
I leave my readers to judge for themselves: 
they will probably place but little importance 
on an individual opinion, but, in my opinion, 
they were infinitely worse : the ancient hermit 
assumed a virtue, if he had it not ; there is little 
doubt but that sloth was under his gown, and, 
unfortunately, that was not the only vice his 
gown covered; but his outward appearance 
conveyed to the eyes of his admirers all that 
virtue and religion and a contempt for the world 
could express; the little offerings, willingly 
brought to his cell, were deposited there in the 
spirit of charity, and the virtues practised by 
the peasantry were the effects of the prayers 
and exhortations of the pastor ; so far all was 
well ; if the preacher felt not himself the truth 
he was apparently, with immense zeal, impressing 
on his auditors — these were not less benefitted 
than if he had been a saint ; his account stood 
between himself and his God; his hypocrisy 



92 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

effected no injury on his disciples. — I have 
known the sacrament to be administered in a 
Protestant church abroad, by one whom I had 
reason to believe was, in broad terms, a heart- 
less scoundrel ; but, I believe, that the man's 
wickedness could not prevent those who were 
kneeling there repentant, and disposed as we 
are told and as we feel we should be upon such 
an occasion, from receiving every benefit that 
is to be derived from tasting the sacred em- 
blems ; the Deity and the penitent Christian 
are the only parties concerned ; if the officiat- 
ing minister be unworthy of his office, neither 
the sin nor the fault rests with his flock. We 
can only lament, that when a man's character 
renders him unfit for the church, the most im- 
portant and the most difficult of all professions, 
he should be allowed to undertake to teach 
others what he cannot practice himself. 

The race of French abbes, properly so called, 
is now extinct ; they are, at least, rarce aves, 
scarce, something like the breed of Irish wolf- 
dogs; the present careless, negligent, matter- 



FRENCH PRIESTS. 93 

of-fact gentlemen, are no more like the gallant, 
mincing, well-bred abbes of former times, than 
' I to Hercules.' The abbes of the eighteenth 
century were mirrors of chivalry, pine apples of 
perfection ; they were devoted to the sex, and 
no faultless hero of a circulating library novel 
could be more ready to break a lance in the 
cause of his lady love, or to maintain the pre- 
eminence of her beauty against all comers of 
gentle degree. They were the vice-husbands 
of the day ; the critics of the opera ; acquainted 
with all the intrigues of the sock and buskin, — 

' And no Parisian audience could endure a 
Song, scene, or air, when they cried seccatura.' 

The qualities of the Italian cicisbeo, and the 
yierits of the Spanish corteio, were combined 
in the French abbe ; the mysteries of the toilet 
were Eleusinian mysteries to all but him ; his 
presence was like a master-key, all doors flew 
open before him ; he was the first in the morn- 
ing at the bed-side of his lady par amour; he 
assisted at her levee, superintended the arrange- 
ment of her mouches, quoted Virgil, and com- 



94 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

pared her to Aurora leaving the saffron bed of 
Tithonus ; detailed all the small talk and scan- 
dal of the seat of dissoluteness ; recited some 
lines from the newest play ; and, in short, was 
a walking journal of daily information; like 
Lauras cavalier, he was faithful as well as amo- 
rous ; was ' wax to receive, and marble to re- 
tain,' — 

1 And was a lover of the good old school, 
Who still become more constant as they cool.' 

I believe I have said before that no rule can 
exist without an exception ; Bossuet, Flechier, 
Massillon, Bourdaloue, and the amiable Fenelon 
of Cambray, were men who would have reflected 
honour on any age ; but they were not true spe- 
cimens of the real French Abbes ; many of the 
latter were about as fitly qualified for the church 
as they were for the command of a frigate. We 
laugh because glorious Bess once appointed a na- 
val captain to a bishopric, and by so doing, per- 
formed a promise which had been rashly made ; 
fortunately the new bishop was a man of true 
piety; but do we recollect the numbers who 



FRENCH PRIESTS. 95 

are now in holy orders and also hold commis- 
sions in the army ? or do we think of the many 
who, disgusted with the duties of a soldier, 
have sneaked, a pas de loup, into the churchy 
with as little difficulty as if they had been chang- 
ing from the guards into the line ? I was, about 
eighteen months ago, in a hatter's shop in Bond 
Street, when a young man elegantly dressed 
entered, and ordered his bill to be sent to his 
hotel ; c you know where to send it to ?' said he, 
on retiring ; c yes, sir/ answered the shopman, 
f to Captain C ,' and named the hotel ; 

"' Captain, nonsense,' rejoined the late infant in 
arms, * I am not in the army now ; address it 
to the Reverend Mr. C— — — , and let me 
have it early in the morning.' Now, for any 
any thing I know to the contrary, this Rev. Mr. 
C " ■ " may be as excellent a clergyman and 

as virtuous a man as Queen Elizabeth's sailor 
proved to be, but there was something pecu- 
liarly unpleasant in hearing his profession an- 
nounced in the way I did, and with apparently 
as little hesitation as if he had been proclaiming 



96 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

his promotion to a majority. I am at this mo- 
ment acquainted with a person preparing for 
orders, who is the magnus Apollo of more than 
one free and easy in the Modern Babylon ; he 
fancies his forte to consist in comic singing, and 
prides himself on the execution of all the flash 
songs and ephemeral parodies of the day. In 
all other respects he is a frank, worthy fellow ; 
his ear is never closed to the voice of distress, 
and he has a ' hand open as day to melting 
charity.' Instances of unworthy members among 
our English clergy are,, happily, very rare ; it 
is impossible that so large a body could exist 
without men being in it who would disgrace any 
community ; the dissolute, gallant French abbe 
is extinct ; and the hunting, six-bottle country 
parson is fast approaching to the end of his 
career. An anecdote of the Abbe de Vatte- 
ville has just occurred to me, which will serve 
to shew my readers of what metal some men 
are made. The abbe was brother to the Baron 
de Vatteville, who was once ambassador to our 
court, Previous to his assuming the cassock, 



FRENCH PRIESTS. 97 

he was colonel of the regiment of Burgundy, in 
the service of Philip IV. of Spain, and on vari- 
ous occasions displayed proofs of daring cou- 
rage. Promotion, however, came but slowly, 
and, disappointed in his expectations, he re- 
signed his commission and retired into a con- 
vent of Carthusians at Besan£on; but the 
gloomy monotony of a convent suited ill with 
his restless spirit, and he determined to escape. 
He, accordingly, appointed a friend to wait for 
him with a horse, outside the walls of the con- 
vent garden ; and he was privately supplied by 
his relations with money, a riding dress, a case 
of pistols, and a sword. Thus equipped, he 
stole by night from his cell into the garden, 
where he was met by the prior, whom he in- 
stantly stabbed, got over the wall, and gallopped 
off at full speed. As soon as he found his 
horse begin to slacken his pace, through fa- 
tigue and hunger, he alighted at an obscure inn, 
ordered dinner, and sat down to his repast with 
the utmost composure. A traveller, who en- 
tered the house shortly after, politely requested 



98 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

that he might be allowed to share with him. 
Vatteville rudely refused, alleging that there 
was little enough for himself, and, impatient of 
contradiction, killed the gentleman on the spot 
with one pistol, and presenting the other to the 
landlady and waiter, swore he would blow out 
their brains if they once dared to interrupt his 
repast. Having thus escaped with impunity, 
he encountered various fortunes ; he, at length, 
landed in Turkey, renounced the Christian 
faith, and covered his apostate sconce with the 
ample turban, received a commission in the 
army, was raised to the rank of bashaw, and 
appointed governor of part of the Morea. But, 
longing to revisit his native country, he entered 
into a secret correspondence with the Vene- 
tians, who were then at war with the Turks, 
obtained absolution, and was presented with a 
valuable church living in Franche Comte, deli- 
vered the towns and forts under his command 
into the hands of the enemy, and was actually 
nominated by Louis XIV. to tire see of Besan- 
9011. The pope, however, though he had granted 



FRENCH PRIESTS* 99 

absolution, refused the bull, and Vatteville was, 
per force, compelled to remain satisfied with 
the first deanery and two rich abbeys. In the 
midst of his magnificence he did not forget his 
old friends the Carthusians ; he often honoured 
them with a visit, and, at last, tranquilly expired 
in his bed, at the advanced age of ninety. Had 
Vatteville been a poor man, and guilty of such 
enormities, he would have been broken upon 
the wheel. I think it was Louis XIV. who 
gave the archbishopric of Lyons to the Abbe 
de Villeroi, who, though no credit to the cle- 
rical profession, was not by any means the equal 
of Vatteville in arch-villainy : Villeroi had for 
many years been attempting in vain to be ap- 
pointed one of the canons of Lyons, and when 
he was nominated by the king to the arch- 
bishopric of that city, the canons waited upon 
him with the usual address of congratulation. 
The abbe received them with great courtesy, 
but he could not help remarking that the stone 
which the builders rejected, had become the 
head of the corner. One of them immediately 
f2 



100 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

replied : ' This is the Lord's doing, it is mar- 
vellous in our eyes.' I do not know whether 
the wit of the answer saved the canon from 
rebuke. 

All sensible people, among whom I, of course, 
include myself, have long since been unanimous 
in agreeing, that the vow which binds the Ro- 
mish priests to celibacy, is far from binding 
them to chastity ; I know several highly gifted 
young Catholic clergymen who deeply deplore 
the rigorous act which, as it were, excludes 
them from the enjoyments of civilized society. 
They alone can repeat with feeling, the words 
of Moliere's masterpiece, Pour etre devot,je ne 
suis pas moins homme. ' You see/ said the 
Duke of Norfolk to his chaplain, on the passing 
of the Bloody Act, ' we have hindered priests 
from having wives.' ' And can your grace,' re- 
plied the monk, ' prevent wives from having 
priests?' If we may believe all that is told of 
the Cordelier Maillard, he surpassed perfection 
itself; he railed against the vanities of the world 
with as much warmth as Peter the Hermit 



FRENCH PRIESTS. 101 

preached in favour of the Crusades ; he threat- 
ened years of purgatory for an extra flounce; 
and such an enormity as a new head-dress en- 
tailed Satan's special patronage for the inventor. 
In his sermon for the second Thursday in Lent, 
he thus apostrophises the counsellors' wives 
who wore embroidery : c You say that you are 
clad according to your conditions ; all the devils 
in hell fly away with your conditions and you 
too, my ladies ! You will say to me, perhaps, 
our husbands do not give us this gorgeous ap- 
parel, we earn it by the labour of our bodies ; 
thirty thousands devils fly away with the labour 
of your bodies, my ladies !' This language is 
some of the most moderate of the pious author, 
who went near to equal the famous fathers An- 
dre and Menot in the turpitude of his expres- 
sions : all preachers of this class no sooner en- 
tered the pulpit, than they degenerated into, as 
Voltaire has styled the Italians, mere harlequins 
in surplices ; in short, the pulpit was trans- 
formed into a stage for buffoons, and the jack- 
pudding preachers sullied it with their obsce- 



102 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

nities : their hearers revolted at passages which 
would have disgraced an infidel to utter ; the 
churches were deserted, except when a Masillon 
stood up to delight and instruct, and until good 
taste finally established its empire in the age of 
Louis XIV. The decline of the abbes' power- 
ful dominion did not, however, accompany the 
fall of the Andres and Menots : gallantry, talent, 
wit, powder, and frivolity, formed part of their 
birth-right, till the period of the revolution, and 
there we lose sight of the men who had for so 
many years identified themselves with the name 
of Frenchman ; of the old wits who were still 
the life of society ; and of the younger cham- 
pions of the church, who were also sworn cham- 
pions of the fair, who dreamed of any thing but 
that which appertained to their profession, and 
who, in spite of the warnings of their spiritual 
superiors, revelled in bright visions, 

' Like those angelic youths of old, 
Who burn'd for maids of mortal mould, 
Bewildered left the glorious skies, 
And lost their heaven for woman's eyes/ 



THE PRIEST'S FAVOURITE. 



f Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, 
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear.' 

ROMEO AND JULIET. 



105 



THE PRIEST'S FAVOURITE. 






' Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, 
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear.' 

ROMEO AND JULIET. 

The age of miracles, like the age of chivalry, 
is passed, and Prince Hohenlohe is the only 
modern professor of Thaumaturgy in modern 
Europe ; not that the intercession of his high- 
ness is employed for the inhabitants of the 
smallest and most intelligent quarter of the 
world alone ; the intervening of the wide Atlan- 
tic does not tend to destroy the effect of pray- 
ers put up for our American friends ; a rivulet 
will cross the scent of a blood-hound, but an 
ocean cannot impede the working of Hohen- 
lohe's miracles. The sinners of either hemi- 
sphere, the wicked, who have played such fan- 
tastic tricks before high heaven, as ' make the 
f5 



106 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

angels weep/ employ this great man to work 
special wonders in their favour ; there is not a 
prodigy in the Talmud, nor a well-authentic- 
ated miracle in the Koran, but Hohenlohe can 
surpass ; Friar Bacon was nothing to him, and 
Nostradamus but a shadow: he would have 
exhausted the patience of Jupiter himself by 
his continual prayers in behalf of others ; he 
alone is never weary of the task of saving souls 
from the clutches of him of the club-foot, and 
not to be worn out by the unceasing petitions 
of those who annoy him pour V amour de Dieu* 
Were the relics now in the possession of all the 
Catholic churches in the world to be collected, 
it is said they would not equal the valuables of 
that nature contained in his own museum ; he 
has more wood of the true cross than would 
suffice to build his Majesty's fleet, and as many 
locks of our Lady's hair as would furnish a re- 
giment of dragoons with tails, c streaming like 
meteors to the wind,' or equip with standards 
all the pachas in the dominions of that very re- 
spectable man the Grand Turk, the shadow of 



the priest's favourite. 107 

God upon earth, brother to the sun and moon, 
disposer of all earthly crowns, and who is obey- 
ed in the classic land where Homer sang, in the 
fields where Daoud prayed, and Mousa walked; 
and in the country where Pharaoh ruled, and 
mummies rot; the land of Cheops and Cephre- 
nes, which now calls Mohammed Ali Pasha, 
viceroy; the Roumelian, the once boulouk ba- 
shi, and son of his father Ibrahim Aga. He, 
not Ibrahim Aga, but Prince Hohenlohe, is the 
undoubted possessor of the most valuable relic 
the Catholic world can boast; he has enclosed 
in a phial — what will my readers suppose?-— 
half-a-dozen bristles from the back of St. An- 
thony's hog? or a toe-nail of St. Nicholas? 
No ! however valuable even they may be, what 
are they compared to the treasure in question ? 
It is the very phial which was shown by the 
sacristan of a church on the Continent to an 
inquisitive traveller, who declared he could see 
nothing in it: the blind infidel! It contains, I 
say it contains nothing less than some of the 
darkness which Moses spread over the land of 



108 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

Egypt ! It is as genuine as Warren's blacking 
or Wright's champagne ; it is the real darkness 
visible, and the only portion of it ever carefully 
bottled. And now, what are all relics, and an- 
tiques, and curiosities, to this invaluable trea- 
sure ? What is the habit of ' Claudius Ptole- 
meus, who lived in the year 135?' the poluflos 
bozo, the little phial that held part of those 
waves which bore Cleopatra's vessel, when she 
sailed to meet Antony? or the zona, the moros 
musphonon, the invisible -rendering girdle? 
What are all these, the undoubted property of 
Colonel Feignwell, (every one has seen them in 
his possession,) what are all these, I once more 
ask, when compared with the Egyptian dark- 
ness of the Hohenlohe ? 

Though it may be said of the age of mira- 
cles, that it ' once was and is not,' (Ilium fuit 
et nosfuimus Troes, that's new,) it by no means 
follows, that the belief in miracles themselves 
be past. During my residence in Paris, I for- 
tunately became acquainted with a son of the 
church, who was the merriest man, ' within the 



the priest's favourite. 109 

limits of becoming mirth, I ever spent an hour's 
talk withal ;' it was impossible to disturb the 
serenity of his temper, except by refusing to 
give credence to modern miracles, and by de- 
nying transubstantiation ; on all other topics he 
was a worthy disciple of Momus ; but on that 
rock alone his bark would split, and his good 
humour be lost in the wreck. By a curious 
coincidence, his name was the same as my own, 
and I became acquainted with him by receiving 
a letter which was misdirected, and intended 
for him. We at first usually met in that favour- 
ite resort of invalids, quidnuncs, old ladies, and 
bonnes (Tenfans 9 the petit provence of the Tui- 
leries. He appeared to be well known to all 
the frequenters of that delightful little spot, on 
excellent terms with those of his own age, and 
a universal favourite with the children. He 
had something to say to every one ; a word of 
condolence or congratulation with the invalid, 
according as his looks bespoke retrograding or 
advancing health ; a five-minutes dish of politics 
with the bourgeois ; a smile of salutation and a 



110 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

most outrageous compliment to the ladies — his 
sisters, as he called them ; and a pocketful of 
bon-bons for the children. I generally managed 
to be the first at the rendezvous, and I was in- 
variably overwhelmed with questions concern- 
ing the probability of my aged friend making 
his appearance in his usual place ; it was de- 
lightful to witness the enthusiasm with which 
the curly-headed rogues, and fine romping girls, 
would hail his appearance, as soon as he was 
seen descending the slope leading from the ter- 
race called the Fer a Cheval ; a wild burst of 
joy, and then a simultaneous rush to meet him, 
proclaimed in unequivocal terms the heartiness 
of his welcome, and he was led to his own spe- 
cial bench, (the privilege of possessing which 
no one thought of disputing with him,) sur- 
rounded by a joyous noisy crowd, a few of the 
favourite members of which (and they were al- 
ways the youngest,) seized on the spolia opima, 
his hat and cane, and set off at a swift gallop 
round the garden enclosures. He was always 
addressed as man pere, by the young candidates 



THE PRIEST'S FAVOURITE. Ill 

for his notice ; and he, in return, applied the 
epithet mes enfans to them in general, and mon 
Jilsy or mafille, as he happened to speak to any 
one in particular: I, for a long time, imagined 
that no favouritism existed in the little com- 
munity over which he presided, till I began to 
remark that a beautiful girl, apparently about 
fourteen, was always first in the chase to meet 
him; that he always kissed her, even when the 
ceremony was omitted with regard to the others ; 
that he preferred to accept her support, when 
the exulting urchins had robbed him of his 
stick ; and when he was seated, she would stay 
by him, and listen to the c thousand and one 8 
anecdotes he had to tell ; her dark, soft, luxu- 
riant ringlets, mingling with the old man's long 
snowy locks, as her head reclined on his shoul- 
der ; and her silky lashes half concealing her 
expressive eyes, as they were directed towards 
the ground; and her whole appearance be- 
speaking rivetted attention in ' as fair a thing 
as e'er was formed of clay.' He was never 
weary of answering her questions, nor of afford- 



112 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES, 

ing her explanations to her ingenuous inquiries* 
which often delayed us till the queen of night 
was high up in the heavens, and when we were 
deserted by every one but this, his avowed fa- 
vourite, and her bonne ; even then, the child 
was always the first to propose separating ; for 
I actually believe my venerable namesake would 
have remained there till the guards came round 
to clear the gardens, sooner than he would wil- 
1 ngly depart from the beautiful child on whom 
his heart seemed to dote with a father's affec- 
tion. He never lost his flow of spirits but when 
the time for repeating the bon soir arrived, and 
then he would linger and walk slowly with her 
towards the Place Vendome, and their parting 
would be with as much reluctance, on both 
sides, as if they were never to meet again. I, 
who am blessed with as much curiosity as cer- 
tain persons mentioned by Butler, who 

' Paint and patch their imperfections, 

Of intellectual complexions ; 

And daub their tempers o'er with washes, 

As artificial as their faces,' 



THE PRIEST'S FAVOURITE. 113 

felt very much inclined to ask my friend if this 
child (whose name, by the by, was Eugenie,) 
were not related to him, but I reflected that 
he might consider the question an impertinent 
one, and I judged that I might easily settle the 
matter of consanguinity by an attentive examin- 
ation of her features ; but when an opportunity 
presented itself to enable me to do so, I could 
not, with satisfaction, trace the slightest resem- 
blance between Eugenie and the old priest. 
The former had soft blue eyes, and she used 
to raise the transparent lids, and look so smil- 
ingly at the man of God, when he was, in his 
own inimitable manner, telling a tale that would 
make the heart-strings burst with noisy mirth, 
that I have really often regretted that she was 
not his daughter. The latter, on the contrary, 
had dark, but not black eyes, sparkling with 
intelligence, and swimming in the ecstacy of 
some joyous thought: his features, notwith- 
standing the general amiability of their expres- 
sion, were harsh, and in his \ dark moment/ 
when attacked on some point of his faith, 



114 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

would assume a deep hue, denoting something 
repulsive, and a scowl of strongly marked fe- 
rocity. Misery, as the proverb says, makes us 
acquainted with strange bedfellows; he had 
been unfortunate in his early days, but I am 
quite confident that adversity had never brought 
him in connection with the fiercer passions of 
our nature ; and I am not a second Lavater, 
to account for the peculiarity of his looks ; nor 
another Deville, to explain the particular for- 
mation of his cranium ; I know nothing more 
of skulls than having occasionally handled a 
pair in a waterman's capacity: my knowledge 
of organs is confined to the barrel organ alone; 
and my acquaintance with the head is limited to 
a devoted admiration of bright eyes and rosy 
lips ; not, particularly, such lips as Dionysius 
Lambinus delighted in, though he spoke with 
all the authority of experience ; nor do I re- 
quire, as an indispensable necessity, that they 
should be like those of JLucretia, mentioned by 
iEneas Sylvius, ad morsum aptissima. It is 
sufficient for me, that the bright eyes, of what- 



THE PRIEST'S FAVOURITE. 115 

ever colour they may be, promise sense and 
good humour: 

f Let them effuse the azure ray 
With which Minerta's glances play;' 

and let the lips ' keep the word of promise to 
the hope,' and I see not what more a man can 
require, though the eyes be odd ones, and the 
mouth as wide as Dublin Bay itself. I am di- 
gressing again, revenons a nos moutons. The 
last time I ever saw Eugenie and my namesake 
together, the evening passed in nearly the same 
manner as I have described most of them to 
have done. The same burst of joy from the 
light-hearted children, the same fixed smiling 
attention to his mirth-exciting narratives, the 
same delay, and the same reluctance to sepa- 
rate : it was a final separation, — they never met 
again in this world ; in less than twelve hours 
after our happy meeting in the gardens, I saw 
her a corpse. I thought her matchless while 
living; but, good God! how beautiful that girl 
looked in death ! 'Tis true all colour had left 
her cheeks, but beauty still lingered there,— 



116 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

' a gilded halo hovering round decay ;' a smile 
still played on her mild, angelic features, and 
retained its soft expression during the whole of 
6 that first dark day of nothingness.' In a few- 
short hours more, this child of nature was con- 
signed to an early grave in the cemetery of 
Pere la Chaise, and she now sleeps in a spot 
where the King of Terrors is robbed of all his 
gloom; where roses, and orange-flowers, and 
young plantations, draw our ideas for a moment 
from the mass of corruption that is festering 
beneath the smiling bowers and stately marble; 
where the coward lies, unscared, by the side 
of the hero, and the soldier, at peace, close to 
the civilian; where friend and foe repose in 
cjread silence, T>oth alike shrouded on the cold 
couch of clammy earth. A small marble urn 
on a pedestal, and a square black tablet, on 
which is inscribed the word Eugenie, in gold 
letters, points out the spot, which is only a few 
yards from the beautiful gothic tomb of Abe- 
lard and Heloise. Eugenie's surviving friend 
supported the bereavement with much greater 



THE PRIEST'S FAVOURITE. 117 

firmness than I could have well expected : he 
certainly seemed, for the first two or three 
days, to suffer exceedingly with anguish, but 
he soon gradually recovered the usual spring 
and elasticity of his mind, and, with the excep- 
tion that he would never again frequent his old 
haunt at the petit provence, he appeared to 
have ' taken leave of sorrow;' I found the ordi- 
nary ' quip and crank/ he indulged in hearty 
mirth, and inspired others with it, and I am 
not sure but he would soon again have visited 
the Tuileries, but for the fatal occurrence I 
am about to relate :— He had invited me to 
take breakfast with him, for the purpose of 
introducing me to a gentleman of well-known 
talent, and high reputation in the French lite- 
rary world; I was punctual to the time ap- 
pointed ; I found the gates of the court-yard 
open, and passed the porter's lodge unnoticed : 
my summons at the door of his apartment, au 
second, was answered by the single domestic 
his limited means allowed him to keep, and I 
was proceeding towards his little neat study, 



118 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

when the servant slightly pressed his hand on 
my shoulder, and pointed to a sofa, on which 
was spread a sheet, which, from the form in 
which it lay, evidently covered a human body. 
I reeled back with the natural awe of death, 
and I instinctively guessed at the dreadful 
truth, — my excellent old friend had that morn- 
ing dropped dead from his chair. My readers 
would find no interest in perusing a detail of 
his funeral ; he was interred at Pere la Chaise, 
near the child of his affections ; and before the 
grave closed on him for ever, I threw a wreath 
of immortels on his coffin, and, with tears in 
my eyes, took leave of him who will at least 
be immortal in my memory. I subsequently 
learned that Eugenie was his grandchild, and 
that her father fell at Ligny. I can now easily 
account for every occurrence that before per- 
plexed me : their affection for each other was 
unbounded ; and after he was robbed of her, 
the worm that gnawed at his heart, and ulti- 
mately destroyed him, was concealed by the 
smile that beamed with sickly lustre on the 



THE PRIEST'S FAVOURITE. 119 

world. They both sleep almost in on& grave, 
and only live in men's memories. 'Twere to 
consider too curiously to carry our inquiries 
farther ; their insensible dust once willed and 
moved, to what purpose it may be applied in 
the conducting of this glorious world it is not 
ours to say ; we will not exercise our imagina- 
tion to trace the noble dust of Alexander : — 
1 Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold 
for balsams.' 






CARNIVAL ADVENTURE. 



' Thrust not your head into the public street, 

To gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces ; 

But stop my house's ears, I mean my casements; 

Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter 

My sober house/ Merchant of venice. 



123 



A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE. 



c Thrust not your head into the public street, 
To gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces ; 
But stop my house's ears, I mean my casements ; 
Let not the sound t>f shallow foppery enter 
My sober house/ merchant of Venice. 

What Io Paeans are sung when the gloom and 
weary melancholy of a severe winter are dis- 
pelled, by the Genius of Carnival shaking off 
sleep, and showing his jolly face to his anxi- 
ously expecting worshippers ! His altars, raised 
in the theatres, ball-rooms, and guinguettes, 
are surrounded by motley crowds pressing for- 
ward with laudable zeal to enjoy the jubilee, 
and partake in the gaieties of the comely god. 
The carnival, though looked forward to with 
anticipations of delight, is, however, no longer 
the scene of masquerades and follies, pomp and 
splendour, which it once was ; we can now with 
g2 



124 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

difficulty trace any remains of the Roman satur- 
nalia, in which the Franks once delighted, bor- 
rowing the custom from their conquerors, and 
covering their chains with roses. The church 
was the first to put an extinguisher upon their 
mirth, till it found that if the people were not 
allowed to amuse themselves according to their 
own fashion, their thoughts would be directed 
towards causes which might ultimately produce 
effects, in direct variance with the well being 
of her of Babylon; the old lady was conse- 
quently but too happy to rekindle the flame 
she had so unceremoniously puffed out, and the 
torch of the god of Folly once more blazed 
bright and clear, till the troubles and agitations 
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries again 
dashed it to the ground, whence it was a second 
time raised and re-illumined by the Italians 
who accompanied Catherine de Medicis to 
France, at the period of her marriage to 
Henri II. The worship of the merry god now, 
continued uninterrupted for a considerable num- 
ber of years, but a third prohibition, in 1790, 



A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE. 125 

again threw down his altars, and spread dismay 
among the observers of his rites ; and it was 
not till Bonaparte was made first consul that 
they were finally restored, to the unutterable joy 
of the Parisians, who celebrated the happy event 
with every demonstration of excessive delight ; 
and universal France did then 



get drunk 



For joy that Mirth her sovereign was restored/ 

During a few years nothing could exceed the 
beauty, variety, and richness of the costumes 
displayed upon the annual return of the carni- 
val; no one who went in character thought of 
expense, the savings of the year were squan- 
dered in an hour; the Boulevards were crowded 
with carriages containing a laughable assem- 
blage of faces ; equestrians and pedestrians vied 
with each other in seeking for and affording 
amusement ; wit, puns, and repartees were the 
order of the day. Jews, sailors, quack doctors, 
Saracens, and wild Indians, might be seen to- 
gether, crammed into one vehicle ; followed, 
perhaps, by a troop of knights from the east 
contrie, equipped in all the glory of hauberks 



126 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

and tasses, casques, gorgets, brassets, cuishes 
and gauntlets, mounted on magnificent charg- 
ers, and endeavouring c to witch the world with 
noble horsemanship.' Among the pedestrians, 
we might have beheld Don Quixote on amica- 
ble terms with an harlequin, and his lady-love 
hanging on the arm of a French tooth-drawer; 
a Turk in kindly conference with a Paynim ; 
and Othello, faithless to his Desdemona, whis- 
pering intelligent nothings and soft nonsense 
into the willing ears of some pretty oyster-girl. 
In short, it would be impossible to enumerate the 
various characters which thronged the public 
walks, attired in every known costume save the 
ecclesiastical. The police then, as now, rigor- 
ously prohibited any guise tending to ridicule 
or throw contempt on the clergy ; fine and im- 
prisonment w r ere the penalties for, as it was 
termed, outraging public decorum; and you had 
better 



- t walk about begirt with briars, 



Instead of coat and small-clothes, than put on 
A single stitch reflecting upon friars, 
Although you swore it only was in fun/ 



A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE, 127 

The carnival of the present day is very different 
from that of a quarter of a century ago ; the 
splendour and beauty of the costumes have 
given way to the dirty, tawdry, fantastic rags of 
the mountebank: the wit, pun, and repartee, 
have yielded to the lowest vulgarity to which 
language can be applied ; occasionally two car- 
riages full of characters will meet, but in place 
of the merry jests and cutting jeux de mots of 
the olden time, they assail each other with tor- 
rents of low abuse, got by heart for the occa- 
sion, and make use of the broadest and most 
unequivocal terms in uttering obscenities that 
would c start the isle from her propriety •' At 
any other period of the year the public uttering 
of such language would subject him who was 
guilty of it to a long imprisonment ; but during 
the carnival, a license seems given for speaking 
and listening to every thing abominable and 
disgusting : the silence to which they are forced 
during fifty weeks of the year is amply made 
amends for in the purposes to which they apply 
their tongues during the remaining fortnight. 



128 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

The people, too, seem no longer inclined to 
amuse themselves as they did formerly; few 
now assume ' a guise foreign to their nature/ 
except shopmen, clerks, and Ldisians, and 
those who are employed by the police to amuse 
the people at a stipulated price. This latter 
corps of mercenaries are expected to leap and 
dance, and make grimaces, and utter their filthy 
ribaldry, for the paltry remuneration of thirty 
sous! Conceive a poor half-starved wretch 
undertaking to make all Paris laugh for one 
shilling and three pence ! I remember seeing 
a poor devil, dressed in the dirty white finery 
of a Pierrot, or Scaramouch, standing warming 
his hands at the little charcoal fire of a dealer 
in roasted chesnuts, at the corner of the Rue 
de Richelieu. The day was very cold and 
damp, and the poor fellow cast many a wistful 
look at the provender, while he was enjoying 
the luxury of warm fingers, and unmindful of 
the approach of an agent of police, under whose 
superintendence this department of the public 
economy was placed ; the latter no sooner saw 



A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE, 129 

in what manner Pierrot was gaining the public 

wealth, and easing the government treasury of 

fifteen pence, than he made a smart application 

of his cane to the back of the luckless buffoon, 

asked him if he thought it was by idleness he 

could form any claim on the coffers of the people, 

and terminated his objurgations, by bawling in 

his hears, Amuse toi, grand coquinf There 

was a lurking humour in the eye of the Merry 

Andrew, that became manifest on being told to 

amuse himself while writhing under the agony 

of pain ; he turned round, muttering, Biribi / 

on senfiche ! and at length darted off, singing, 

to the great amusement of the crowd :- — 

' N'saut' point-z a demi, 
Paillass' mon ami : 
Saute pour tout le monde V 

The remains of the ancient carnival cannot now 
be found in the annual parade on the Boule- 
vards ; the masked balls of the opera, and some 
other theatres, alone present a picture of what 
it once was ; these balls were first introduced 

under the regency of the Duke of Orleans ; and 
g5 



130 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

the projector, the Chevalier de Bouillon, re- 
ceived a pension of 6000 livres (£240) for his 
ingenuity. It was no less a person than a friar, 
a Father Sebastian, who invented the means of 
elevating the floor of the pit to a level with the 
stage, and lowering it at pleasure ; and it is said 
that Marie Antoinette herself often honoured 
(incog.) the balles masques et pares with her 
presence. I have heard an anecdote of a cele- 
brated French bishop, who, to the inexpressible 
amazement of the whole company, entered the 
ball-room, attired in full sacerdotal costume. It 
was bad enough in the eyes of every one that 
such a person should be seen in such a place ; 
judge then of their astonishment when they saw 
him advance, with all the empressement of a 
younger man, to solicit a masked frail one to be 
his partner in the dance : the reverend father 
threaded the mazes of the quadrille with infinite 
eclat, proved himself an adept in the mysteries 
of FEte, its chaines Anglaises, and tours de 
mains ; and did himself incalculable honour by 
his finished performance of a modern youth's 



A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE. 13! 

horror, the awful cavalier seuL The dance 
was finished, his humour enjoyed, and many a 
joke began to be played off at his expense, 
when he mounted a chair, and by his serious 
demeanour and elevated voice, repressed all in- 
cipient jests: • My good children,' said he, ' I 
am right glad to see you thus enjoy yourselves, 
and, by my presence here, you may perceive I 
think not ill of your amusement ; but, for my 
own part, I come with another motive than 
mere pleasure ; I come in behalf of the nu- 
merous families who are deprived of the neces- 
saries of life, through the unusual rigour of the 
season ; you, who are possessed of the luxuries 
of life, will, I am sure, lend a willing ear to the 
appeal of your distressed fellow creatures ; your 
own hearts will tell you what to give ; on my 
side I feel confident that there is not one in this 
room who would not contribute twice as much 
in the cause of charity as he would in common- 
place amusement ; you gave six francs as the price 
of admission, you will glory in giving twelve 
to enable your distressed fellow townsmen to buy 



132 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

bread.' The quaint humour of the benevolent 
clergyman gained the good-will of his hearers ; 
a liberal subscription was the result of his 
efforts, and he departed in his carriage, with 
loud hurrahs, to p'ay off the same happy stra- 
tagem at some other theatre. 

Among the customs peculiar to the carnival, 
is that of acquaintances making and receiving 
visits, in disguise ; a custom which gives rise to 
the most ludicrous qui pro quos, and laughable 
adventures. During the festive season of the 
year 1824, I w r as invited to make one of a party 
of Franciscan friars; we were all foreigners, 
and, at that time, not aware of the ordonnance 
de police, which prohibited the assumption of 
religious attire, and we consequently did not 
surprise a few who thus beheld us in the garb 
of St. Francis, flying in the face of the mandate 
of the worshipful master prefect. We made 
a few visits, and greatly enjoyed the perplexed 
and fruitless endeavours of our friends to disco- 
ver our persons. We were proceeding through 
the Rue de Rivoli, and just turning the corner 



A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE. 133 

of the Rue de Castiglione, when we overheard 
two English gentlemen speaking of a party 
given that night in the Faubourg St. Honore, 
of the house in which, we no sooner got the 
number, than two of us immediately proceeded 
thither, and, in less than ten minutes, found 
ourselves in a comfortable saloon, and in the 
society of a number of our countrymen, to every 
one of whom we were perfect strangers. A 
very merry half hour ensued, and we took our 
leave with assurances from the whole party that 
we were recognised in spite of the cowl and 
mask. The success of our first enterprise ex- 
cited us to deeds of greater daring. We re- 
membered we had seen lights and other symp- 
toms of a fete in a house we had passed in our 
way, and we forthwith resolved to effect an en- 
trance, be the consequence what it might ; we 
boldly advanced to the portal, and the one loud 
thundering rap was answered by the speedy 
appearance of a passing pretty female janitor. 
6 What is your will, sirs V inquired the fair guard 
of the outposts. The question embarrassed us 



134 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

extremely, as we were totally ignorant of the 
names of every one within ; it was necessary, 
however, to say something, and I accordingly 
answered, ' we are going up stairs, Pauline/ 
The last name was uttered quite at a venture, 
and my malignant star willed it to be the right 
one; Pauline clapped her hands, exclaiming 
joyfully, ' I wager any thing it is Monsieur 
Henri !' ' The same,' said I, as we passed her, 
and hurried up the broad staircase : — ' Oh,jeu- 
nesse! youth, youth!' apostrophised the pearl 
of portieres, retiring to her lodge, with all the 
majesty of a theatrical Semiramis. Unan- 
nounced, we entered a spacious saloon, superbly 
illuminated by a softly diffused light of a rich 
chandelier; we found a numerous company, 
among whom were a few, perhaps half-a-dozen, 
of the eternal English, — those biped ferrets, 
who work their way into every hole and corner 
of the Continent. Our reception, however, 
was not such a cordial one as that we expe- 
rienced in the Faubourg St. Honore ; I thought 
we were looked upon with suspicion and dis- 



A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE. 135 

trust, and the situation to both began to be ex- 
ceedingly undesirable : it was then with great 
surprise I saw the master of the house rise and 
shake me by the hand, heartily laughing all the 
while; ' My dear good fellow/ said he, \ the 
next time you enter disguised among friends, 
take your ring off; it has betrayed you ; I should 
not have observed it but for the name engraved 
on it, (Amitie ;) but I will keep your secret, 
and you may set the wits of all the others at 
defiance.' I was now ten times more embar- 
rassed than before, and my poor friend was not 
a wit less alarmed than myself; the old gentle- 
man evidently mistook me for another, and if 
that awful other should arrive, we were in an 
uncomfortable degree of doubt touching the 
consequences. I was half inclined to unmask, 
confess the imprudence of our unwarranted 
intrusion, and ask pardon for the whole as a 
mevefolie tie carnaval: — I had risen to do so, 
but the company misinterpreted the motion as 
one announcing our departure, and they unani- 
mously declared that, since we were known to 



136 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

Monsieur ■ — , our absence could not be 
allowed, and that we must remain and enjoy 
the amusements of the evening. I, hitherto, 
had not spoken a single word, not daring to do 
so, lest some tripping accent should reveal that 
I was one of the nation of shopkeepers ; I, how- 
ever, remained steady to my determination of 
confessing the frolic, and accordingly began :-— 
( Gentlemen,' said I. ' Not a word, not a word, 
we will take no refusal !' was the interruption. 
— ' But, gentlemen!' ejaculated my brother in 
sanctity, from the very top of his lungs. — ' Holy 
fathers,' said a lady, ' listen to the intreaties of 
this crowd of sinners.' — ( Impossible,' replied I, 
retreating backwards towards the door, which 
I saw my friend holding half open,, and we were 
silently congratulating ourselves on our ap- 
proaching escape, when the door was violently 
pushed back, and (mirabile dictu,) there entered 
the very identical person for whom I had been 
taken ; — at least, I immediately found he was 
such, from the old gentleman's violent anger on 
beholding him; — the first words his rage al- 



A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE, 137 

lowed him to utter, were to order a servant to 
go for the guard : we saw that further conceal- 
ment would be useless ; we tore off our masks, 
ungirded the cord of St. Francis from our loins, 
divested ourselves of the cowl, and stepped out 
of the ample gown. We attempted an apology ; 
of course none was listened to, and I regret to 
say that our countrymen were more severe in 
their remarks than the persons who had every 
right to feel offended and insulted. The guard 
arrived, and we were marched off in the custody 
of three soldiers, accompanied by Monsieur 
— ., and the gentleman whose person I had 
involuntarily assumed. As we passed through 
the streets, I observed them in close conversa- 
tion, and the latter apparently endeavouring to 
make his elder companion attach no more im- 
portance to the affair than such a business de- 
served : I was more sensible of that gentleman's 
kindness on arriving at the commissaires ; he 
there represented the matter as originating in a 
mistake, alleging that we were known to both, 
and that they consequently did not wish to un- 



138 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

dertake any farther proceedings. We were 
accordingly liberated, but not without a severe 
reprimand for having donned the ecclesiastical 
habit,— for which act we were liable to fine and 
imprisonment. — Our ignorance of the law, as 
foreigners, alone permitted our second escape ; 
we took leave of the amiable commissary and 
our forgiving prosecutors, assuring them we 
would never again be guilty of crimes of such 
delinquency, and we retired homeward, with 
retrospections scarcely of a pleasant nature, 
concerning the issue of our carnival adventure. 



THE SOMNAMBULIST. 



i How ill this taper burns ! — Ha ! who comes here ? 
I think it is the weakness of mine eyes, 
That shapes this glorious apparition. 
It comes upon me!' julius c^esar. 



141 



THE SOMNAMBULIST. 



6 How ill this taper burns ! — Ha ! who comes here 1 
I think it is the weakness of mine eyes, 
That shapes this glorious apparition. 
It comes upon me V julius c-aESAR. 

During the early part of the spring of 1824/1 
was invited to make one of a quadrille party, at 
the residence of some English friends, in the 
vicinity of St. Cloud. In the country of qua- 
drilles and biensdance, I felt no little hesitation 
in submitting myself to the ordeal of French 
eyes and French remarks, by exhibiting to their 
astonished view the awkward manoeuvres of an 
adept in the reel and country dance. But I 
was persuaded ' to screw my courage to the 
sticking-place,' make light of black eyes, take 
no note of observation, and at once boldly dare 
the various difficulties of the most delightful 



142 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

dance that ever inspired the heels of a tripping 
nation. A merry party had assembled to join 
in the festivities appointed to celebrate the 
natal day of a fair daughter of that island, 
whose sons are proverbially brave, and daugh- 
ters as beautiful as Vulcan's bride. The con- 
trast between the children of the lily and those 
of the rose, was sufficiently striking, at first 
sight, to show that the former had the majority 
in numbers ; and with respect to costume, alas ! 
4 'tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis, 'tis true,' they 
stood pre-eminent and unrivalled ; — the young 
English girls encased and disfigured their 
matchless forms, by wearing things called frocks, 
as scanty and as graceless as umbrella-covers ; 
while their foreign sisters set off (as it is called) 
a villainous shape, and concealed its defects, 
by the aid of the all-powerful priestesses of the ' 
Goddess of Fashion, who looks with benignant 
glance and favouring aspect on the faults and 
frivolities of her darling children of la belle 
France.— We have French modes and French 
milliners, without doubt, in unsparing abun- 



THE SOMNAMBULIST. 143 

dance, but what have they effected? — a partial 
triumph, I never saw but one English girl 
who, without foreign aid, knew how to dress 
well, and who had beauty that needed not even 
that aid to increase its splendour. 

The evening of the fete was one of the most 
lovely that the tutelar guardians of fine weather 
could have favoured us with ; the balmy breath 
of the sweet south came sportively wooing the 
zephyrs, to revel in the golden beams of the 
youthful god sinking in a blaze of light, and 
deputing the sovereignty of the night to his 
fair-haired sister, Luna, the chere amie (though 
it.be not classical) of the beautiful Endymion; 
to her who is styled, par excellence, ' integra,' 
the virgin ; and who, in spite of the appellation, 
was the mother of fifty daughters, each excel- 
ling her parent in brightness and grace. 

' They who call her chaste, began too soon 
their nomenclature,' is somewhere remarked by 
Byron, and an older or a truer remark never 
fell from the pen of ' Triton or of Minnow,' if 
my readers will only extend their amiability so 



144 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

far as to fancy such worshipful gentry seized 
with the rage of wielding a goose-quill, or urged 
on (love, I believe, is the general instigator,) to 
be guilty of poetry. We have heard of an ele- 
phant being in love, and why not a triton? An 
oyster has been know to pine away with green 
and yellow melancholy, and why may not a 
minnow plead guilty to the soft impeachment ? 
But, to return to the buskined goddess, the in- 
violable virgin, the royal Bess of the starry ex- 
panse, who has been dignified with a title to 
which she can advance no claim; let us consi- 
, der what shadow of right she possesses to even 
mere common-place respectability; her first 
fault, like all the faults of so equivocal a per- 
sonage, is jealousy; for which we have the au- 
thority of the swan of Avon, who tells us her 
w T atery beams stayed young Cupid's shafts, 
aimed at ' the fair vestal enthroned by the 
west/ and allowed her to pass on ' in maiden 
meditation, fancy free.' I have no doubt but 
there are some good souls who fancy such an 
act was the effect of modesty ; pshaw ! the veri- 



THE SOMNAMBULIST. 145 

est drab can look modest, as the devil can quote 
scripture, to suit her own purposes : and a top- 
ping procuress will raise her godly eyes, and 
turn up her fastidious nose, and talk of the 
shameless iniquity of the world, and rail at all 
tickers, and toss off ' blue ruin,' alias ? tape,' at 
the rate of five half-pints in four half-hours ; 
and thus the moon, or Cynthia, or, name her 
by whatever c otherwise' you will, is all hypo- 
crisy and rottenness and bad faith; the c invio- 
lable' looks on with all the amiable placidity 
and quiet intelligence of a ( motherly' counte- 
nance, at any wickedness you choose to commit 
within the range of her saintly eyes ; with lewd 
glances will lure some travelling Endymion in 
pursuit of her, and, after alternately teasing 
and tickling him, as fishermen do trout, will 
rush laughing into the arms of a bully-looking 
cloud, leaving the luckless youth in despair 
and dismay on some bleak wild, where, should 
he fall asleep, his life, from the ravens, is not 
worth twenty-four hours' purchase ; and should 

he proceed, he may, to a dead certainty, calcu- 
li 






146 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

late on falling into the insatiable maw of a fetid 
bog, and be dug up, whole and entire, at the 
termination of a third millenium, as a splendid 
specimen of the antidyspeptic effects of peat- 
moss. 

i At lovers' perjuries they say Jove laughs,' 
and in good faith, if the assertion be a true 
one, the jolly king of the immortals, the father 
of the gods, and author of men, must be the 
merriest member in the grand divan which 
bends in acknowledgment to the voice of the 
thunderer ; but pallida luna, the pale-faced 
queen of night, preserves the same unvaried, 
inflexible cast of features, on all occasions, and 
at all times, whether Cytherean Venus be lead- 
ing her merry choirs by moonlight, and the 
Nymphs and decent Graces, as the poet of Ve- 
nusium styles them, be tripping on the sward 
in measured paces, or when maidens, ' in whose 
eyes there lies more peril than in twenty swords,' 
tell their false swains to return \ ere the levia- 
than can swim a league,' and the latter lay per- 
jury unto their souls, and swear to ' put a girdle 



THE SOMNAMBULIST. 147 

round about the earth in forty minutes ;' if the 
silver queen smiled, like the Dictasan offspring 
of Ops and the scythe-armed Saturn, as often 
as it is satisfactorily proved that c oaths are but 
straw to the fire of the blood, what a comely 
visage should we see nightly in the heavens ! 
but, alas, custom hath so far overcome the pris- 
tine modesty of the virgin, that she hath forgot- 
ten the first timid kiss from Endymion, and can 
now gaze unruffled on the dulciafurta, the sweet 
thefts of all the followers of the example set by 
the brother of Bellona, and that mother of 
frailty, the foam-born daughter of the ocean. 
I will trouble my readers but with one more wit- 
ness against the lady in question ; it is the war- 
bler of his native wood-notes wild, who makes 
Juliet say, 

1 O, swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon, 
That monthly changes in her circled orb, 
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable ;' — 

in answer to the prince of adorers, who pro- 
poses to swear 

' By yonder blessed moon, 
That tips with silver all the fruit-tree- tops/ 
H2 



148 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES, 

And now I have done with the lady sovereign 
of the night, who would fain persuade us of her 
modesty ; if there exist any who would as fain 
believe in it, I leave them to all the enjoyments 
they can derive from their faith ; there are, I 
fancy, but few who would, with any extraordi- 
nary degree of alacrity, break a lance in her 
behalf; she is no longer shielded, as she was 
wont to be, by the fallacious display of what 
mortals mistook for chastity ; her name is now 
synonimous with that of ' go-between/ and that 
the unblushing beauty is not a jot better than 
she should be, is a fact as incontrovertible, as 
that a lady always takes off her left stocking 
last ; and that, I hope, no one will have the 
temerity to deny. 

I find I have wasted a little time, and no in- 
considerable space, in tiring that imaginary per- 
sonage, s the gentle reader/ with matters totally 
extraneous to the subject upon which I pro- 
posed to enlarge ; and I will now at once inform 
him, that if he has any business to transact, or 
any thing else to read, he had better put aside 



THE SOMNAMBULIST. 149 

this article, as I have nothing to relate but a 
mere incident, which might have occurred to 
himself as well as to me, and which cannot af- 
ford any, or but very little, amusement. 

On the night of the quadrille party I have 
already mentioned, we had been dancing long 
and merrily, smiting the ground with alternate 
feet to the measure of Collinet's far-famed band. 
The sun had sunk deep below the horizon, and 
had left behind him ' the bright trace of his 
fiery car;' this, too, gradually dissolved and 
disappeared, and we continued tripping through 
the gloaming of the dubious twilight, till the 
soft silvery splendour of the moon spread over 
the surrounding scenery^ and lit up the happy 
faces of the merry dancers ; we had no thought 
of discontinuing, even then, but quadrille suc- 
ceeded quadrille, the laugh and joke bounded 
with active speed from one to another, and we 
dreamt of nothing but the present moment and 
the joy that accompanied it. Jupiter Pluvius, 
however, looked not on our pleasure with will- 
ing eyes. His godship seized a cloud, burst it 



150 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

in his tenacious grasp, as boys crush butter- 
flies, and sent the whole contents, charged with 
all their electric matter, directly over the heads 
of the devoted dancers, who were at that very 
moment as noisy and as joyous as the priests of 
Cybele. The day had been sultry for the sea- 
son, but fine, and not the least threatening of 
rain, so that the storm came upon us in all the 
wild crash of its fury, quite unexpected; it 
seemed as if the wind, rain, lightning, and 
thunder, had started from different goals, and 
met with clashing confusion in their mid-career: 
the rain descended like one continued outpour- 
ing of the waters, and would then cease for a 
minute or two, while the forked lightning shot 
rapidly from the heavy mass of up-piled clouds, 
as the forerunner of the hoarse thunder, that 
roared, peal upon peal, through the heavy over- 
charged atmosphere. As for the wind, iEolus 
and all his children must have split their 
cheeks, — it was what Porson would have called 
a mathematical wind, extracting the roots of 
the trees. 



THE SOMNAMBULIST. 151 

The fury of the storm was so great, that no 
one thought of returning to Paris that night : 
we hastily retired into the house, without con- 
fusion, however, and without alarm; thank 
Heaven ! there was no fainting, no hysterics, 
no shrieks, no tears, no sobs : s We were all sen- 
sible girls,' said a soft blue-eyed enchantress, to 
her half laughing, half angry companions ; c we 
were defeated, but we left the field of battle 
without disgrace ; a retreat demands more ge- 
neralship than a victory.' We all agreed una- 
nimously to this assertion, we spent a gay half 
hour, and then proceeded to take such accom- 
modation as the house afforded. — A room, in 
which there were two sofas, was allotted to me 
and a friend : my companion was speedily bu- 
ried in profound sleep ; but I had found a trea- 
sure on the table, (Quentin Durward) and re- 
solved to sit up and enjoy it. I had been oc- 
cupied, perhaps, an hour and ajialf, in its pe- 
rusal, and was intently poring over one of the 
last chapters of the first volume, when I thought 
I heard a slight noise in the room, and almost 



152 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

at the same instant, perceived something white 
glide slowly between the candle and the fire- 
place ; I looked up, and with no little surprise, 
and, for the moment, with some trepidation, 
perceived a vision, as fair as the light of day, 
as transcendently beautiful as the eldest of the 
graces. 

One of the devotees of Terpsichore had 
arisen in her sleep, and, unconsciously, had 
made her way to our apartment: her long, 
glossy, but uncurled hair, nearly reached the 
ground, and hung about her, in the manner we 
see represented in an early engraving of Mu- 
sidora; her eyes had not the fixed, glassy, 
death-like expression observable in some sleep- 
walkers ; they, on the contrary, beamed with 
all the lustre of waking beauty ; her little white 
feet slightly pressed the rich carpet as she pass- 
ed round the room ; she held in her hand a 
small portrait attached to a dark blue ribband, 
and her only dress was the favourite dishabille 
of the Arabian women when they are behind 
the curtains of the tent. As I saw her advanc- 



THE SOMNAMBULIST. 153 

ing towards the window, and being fearful that 
she would open it, I stepped forward, putting 
myself right before her ; she stood still, and for 
a moment hung down her head, as if in anxious 
thought. I took her gently in my arms, and, 
with all possible care, placed her on the sofa, 
threw a cloak over her, and in a short time, 
with great pleasure, saw her fall into a com- 
posed slumber. I endeavoured to open the 
hand which contained the portrait, but found I 
could not succeed without the risk of awaking 
her; I then cut the blue ribband, drew it out 
of the ring, and ran through, in its place, a 
hair chain, with small gold clasps. She breathed 
heavily, and, I at times thought, mournfully— 
that, I hope, was but fancy, for I had observed 
her, during the evening, as light-hearted and 
as smiling as a fairy ; but the brow does not al- 
ways tell of what corrodes the heart; and I re- 
flected that the beautiful sleeper might have 
cares and anxieties which would have broken a 
stronger frame, but to which her's, as slender 
and as apparently fragile as a reed, bent, and 
h5 



154 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

escaped destruction. I had not much time to 
spend in reflection; her sleep again became 
disturbed, she arose, walked slowly out of the 
room, but, on reaching the door, turned round 
and bowed, (while a faint smile played, like a 
halo, round her lips,) as if in acknowledgment 
of my attention ; I followed her along the cor- 
ridor, and gently slipped my cloak from off her 
ivory-polished shoulders, with heartfelt glad- 
ness saw her enter her room, and shortly after 
heard her conversing with the partner of her 
bed. All this had passed without my worthy 
and sleepy friend being the least conscious of 
what was going on ; I was obliged to return to 
Paris early in the morning, and have never 
heard a word mentioned of the exchange, nor 
have ever since been blessed with a sight of 
the beautiful somnambulist. 



THE 

IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. 



' My fate cries out, 
And makes each petty artery in this body 
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.' 



HAMLET. 



157 



THE IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. 



+•*+■+*-■*•*■■*■■*■■*-*• 



6 My fate cries out, 
And makes each petty artery in this body 
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.' 



HAMLET. 



About four miles from the spot where the odious 
Bastile once reared its dreaded towers to the 
skies, frowns the magnificent fortress of Vin- 
cennes, at the skirts of the wood of that name ; 
the chateau and keep offer the usual testimonials 
of the power of Time over the strongest efforts 
of man, — weak in his strength w T hen opposed to 
such an adversary. The crumbling stone, the 
spongy moss, the overhanging ivy, and the 
general grey hue spread over the massy and 
majestic edifice, combined with its situation, 
flanked on one side by the little town and dark 
wood, and presenting the three other sides to 
a broad open plain, remind us of that by-gone 



158 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

age when warders shook their portly sides at 
the stale jests of some wandering buffoon^ and 
spear heads gleamed in the sun's rays, as they 
glided, ghost-like, just peering above the ram- 
parts ; faint visions of knights and tournaments, 
of ladies and love bowers, of the cross and the 
crescent ; of men at arms, and neighing steeds ; 
of wassail and carousing, and midnight revelry, 
float before us when we look on those mementos 
of the days of chivalry : we can fancy the gor- 
geous panoply of ancient warfare; the loud 
minstrelsy, the shrill clarions, and the serious 
jesting of a passage of arms; and the hoarse 
laugh and broad jokes of the inferior, but not 
less happy inhabitants of a castle, with its tur- 
rets and ramparts, moats, dungeons, and watch- 
towers. The knight and his lady-love no longer 
grace the boast of Vincennes ; the steel-clad 
esquires have made way for the busy blue- 
coated sergeants; and the Milan defences of 
the stalwart chief yielded to the lace and frip- 
pery of the gentil officer of hussars ; the schakos 
of the lancer has superseded the ponderous hel- 



THE IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. 159 

met of the bowman, as the bayonet has super- 
seded the short sword, and as the bow itself has 
fallen into disuse since true valour found its grave 
in the invention of gunpowder ; the grenadier 
does duty where the pikeman paced his soli- 
tary guard, and the artilleur works his field- 
piece where the bowman once drove his bolt. 

The chateau of Vincennes was erected by 
that munificent patron of the arts, Francis the 
First, the hero of Pavia, to whom France is 
indebted for the palace of Fontainebleau, and 
who, in the sixteenth century, commenced the 
Louvre; this chivalrous monarch might have 
been almost justified in saying of Paris what 
Augustus did of Rome, ( I found it of brick, 
and I leave it of marble/ Within this edifice 
Charles Quint breathed out his soul ; here the 
noble conqueror of Agincourt, in the summer 
of his days, and while framing new wars, and 
enjoying new triumphs, by anticipation, was 
opposed in his glorious and dazzling career by 
the grim destroyer; and here, too, the wily 
Mazarine passed from time into eternity. 



160 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

Within the strong boundary of these walls, the 
two Condes, at different periods, were deprived 
of man's birth-right — liberty, and Mirabeau 
sighed away the solitary hours in imprisonment ; 
and last, but not least, in this dreary catalogue, 
here the amiable D'Enghien fell murdered un- 
der the muskets of a picquet of Savary's gen- 
darmes. 

I know of few places where I have brimmed 
the bowl with more pleasure, than I have done 
again and again at Vincennes ; in the deep re- 
tirement of whose wood, some half-dozen mad- 
caps were wont to form another Sans Souci, 
and, in punche a la Romaine, drink with loud 
acclaim to 

' Bright lips, too bright to wither, 
Warm hearts, too warm to die/ 

How often have we banqueted in those sylvan 
shades, making the forest resound to the unre- 
strained mirth of our saturnalia, wooed by the 
blushing cup, and still deeper blushing lip, and 
heedless of the merry hours that danced by un- 
perceived, till the watching stars grew pale. 



THE IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. 161 

The remembrance of such happiness gone by, 
is, alas ! not un tinctured by grief, when I reflect 
how many of that small band are no longer 
among the children of life, and that the wild 
rush of the storm, and the soft glow of the 
zephyr, sweep alike unheeded over their lifeless 
brows. 

It was once } returning from one of these jubi- 
lees of joy, that I met with the Irish artillery- 
man, who is the hero of my tale, or rather of 
his own ; I was walking at a quick pace through 
the Faubourg St. Antoine towards Paris ; sleep 
had shaken her leaden pinions over the inha- 
bitants, and the streets were as noiseless as a 
city of the plague ; I could hear nothing but 
the sound of my own footsteps, and the deep 
sonorous voice of a person some fifty yards in 
advance ; this voice, however, was employed in 
singing an air which had probably never before 
been heard in the Quartier du Faubourg— it 
was a beautiful revolutionary tune, well known 
to Irish ears, and the first words I caught were 
' We'll gloriously die, singing croppies riae up !' 



162 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

The performer was a tall, powerfully-built man, 
of apparently six or seven-and-twenty, and, in 
the magnificent costume of a French artilleur, 
appeared to great advantage : he stood above 
six feet in height, wore thick curling hair and 
beard, and there was a reckless cast of wild 
desperation in his handsome features, height- 
ened by large sparkling black eyes,' that had, 
in his own words, a dash of the devil in it. We 
mutually accosted each other in English : I at 
first thought he had been revelling rather be- 
yond the limits of becoming mirth in the sun- 
shine of the soul, but I was mistaken. We 
walked together along the Boulevards, and 
during the course of our promenade, I elicited 
from him that he was a native of Kilkenny — a 
place where there is fire without smoke, air 
without fog, water without mud, women with- 
out beauty, and the town paved with marble. 
6 And you have bidden a lasting farewell to the 
green island?' said I, * and, forgetful of the ties 
which bind you to England, have entered the 
service of her natural enemies V ' As for Eng- 






THE IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. 163 

land/ answered the soldier, c I acknowledge no 
affection for her; the green isle I had better 
forget ; France is no enemy to me ; she received 
me when my own country could not afford me 
shelter ; she opened her arms to me, when my 
own headstrong passions drove me from the 
land I love— from the land which contains all I 
ever did, all I ever can love. Give me your 
attention but for a few minutes, and then judge 
if I can return to it with any reasonable hope 
of regaining the happiness I have lost. But 
five years since, I was the happiest mortal that 
the sun ever rose upon to light to his daily la- 
bour ; I do not ask you to consider what I am 
— -a common soldier, looked upon with jealousy 
by my comrades, on account of my nation : a 
wild, careless being, who, having suffered all 
that bad Fortune can inflict, now spits at her, 
and defies her malice. I was, as I have said, a 
happy man; happy in my affairs, happy in my 
friends, and most happy in the love of the pret- 
tiest pair of eyes that ever smiled yes to a plain 
question. I was possessed of a small, but flou- 



164 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

rishing farm, that repaid me well for all the 
trouble and anxiety it had occasionally cost 
me; it wanted but one thing to make it com- 
plete — a wife. I had long been what is called 
courting Norah Sullivan, the prettiest girl in 
the barony ; she had sworn hundreds of times 
to be none but mine, and I, like a poor fool, 
believed her/ He here uttered curses, not 
loud, but deep, upon the whole race of women, 
from Eve downwards ; and it was here I first 
discovered he was a classical scholar, by his 
quoting two or three beautiful Latin lines upon 
female affection, and which, coming from such 
a man, (viewing him as a mere private soldier,) 
jarred strangely with the feelings ; he noticed my 
astonishment, and smiled. ' Well, sir, matters 
went on as I could have wished, for some time; 
we were looked upon by the neighbours almost 
as married people ; we were complimented and 
rallied, and we returned thanks and laughed in 
return. I am unable to enter into any minor 
details ; I will only leave you to judge of my 
astonishment, my total stupefaction, on hearing 



\ 
\ 



THE IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. 165 

from her own lips, a few evenings previous to 
our expected union, that she could never be 
mine. I had been conducting her home from 
an old aunt's, and, at her father's gate, was 
about to kiss her, as was usual, before we 
parted for the night, when she drew back ra- 
ther proudly. " Norry, ma vourneen," said I, 
" what means this? you look angry." u l am 
not angry, then, dear Mich," — she could still 
say dear, sir, — " I am not angry, but— but if 
we part here, we part for ever; I have promised 
to be Carrol's wife, and my father approves of 
it." I could not answer her; she looked at me 
for an instant, and retired hastily into her fa- 
ther's house ; I believe my looks affrighted her, 
for I know that at that moment they bore an 
expression, which too plainly indicated the tu- 
mult of thoughts, and wild contest of passions 
that raged within me. I had heard some flying- 
report before that Carrol was playing treachery, 
but I gave it no credence, as he was my old 
and sworn friend. Here, however, was con- 
firmation strong, and I walked slowly from the 



166 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

door, swearing dreadful oaths of the deadly re- 
venge I would wreak upon Carrol wherever I 
might meet him. There was a slight ascent 
which lay in my way, at the foot of which, on 
the other side, was a small fish-pond; I had 
gained the summit, scarcely conscious of whither 
I was going, when I beheld my now detested 
rival coming towards me ; he stood in full relief 
against the clear tranquil water that reposed 
behind him. I actually screamed with exulta- 
tion that I had him in my power ; I drew a 
large clasp knife, and rushed down on him ; he 
had not time to step aside, but, fortunately for 
him, the grass being wet, my foot slipped, I lost 
the knife, and we both rolled together into the 
pond. He had always been accounted the 
stronger man, but I know not if it were from 
the suddenness of the attack that he lost his 
self-possession, I seemed endowed with force 
sufficient to overcome a dozen such opponents ; 
he, however, struggled dreadfully as we lay in 
the slime at the edge of the pond, and I with 
difficulty succeeded in getting on my feet, while 



THE IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. 167 

I retained my hold on him, and with all my 
force hurled him into deep water. I waded up 
to my waist, to watch if he should arise ; he 
did, and was making his way towards the bank, 
when I again seized him, and we once more 
grappled with all our remaining strength. His 
shrieks rang wildly and fearfully through the 
night air; I grasped him by the throat; he 
made two or three ineffectual attempts to cry 
out, and was at length silent. I gradually re- 
laxed my hold ; his body stood erect, perhaps 
for a second, swayed with unsteady balance to 
and fro, and at length fell, face upwards, with 
a heavy splash, into the pond. My rage, sir, 
had subsided as his opposition died away; I 
stood in the water gazing on his features; I 
dragged him towards the bank ; I grew affright- 
ed, and, after looking fearfully around me, fled 
with the speed of an antelope towards my own 
home. I cannot describe to you what I felt on 
reaching the home that had always hitherto 
smiled upon me. I knew it could afford no 
security for a murderer, and that my only hope 



168 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

of safety was in flight. With two or three ne- 
cessaries, I quitted the place with a heavy heart, 
unconscious to what quarter I had best direct 
my steps, ignorant of what means I should pur- 
sue to avoid the consequences of that to which 
frenzy had driven me. I need not trouble you 
with an account of my sufferings, and priva- 
tions, and narrow escapes. I was one time in 
the same room with the officers of justice who 
were in pursuit of me, and from them I learned 
that Carrol was not dead, but that he had 
received a deep stab in the right arm, which, 
however, did not menace his life. The tears 
gushed from my eyes on hearing this intelli- 
gence, and I inwardly thanked my Maker that 
I did not bear the stamp of murderer on my 
brow. After much trouble and danger, I suc- 
ceeded in reaching this country, (I had often 
been here before,) and was gladly welcomed 
into the corps to which I now belong. I am 
as happy as circumstances will allow, but my 
peace of mind, sir, is not regained] I cannot 
forget that Norah Sullivan is Carrol's wife.' 



THE IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. lb^ 

The artilleryman here ended his tale ; it ex- 
cited my pity for him — there is no being more 
worthy of pity than an exile. T enjoyed his 
acquaintance for some time, and found him a 
classical scholar, a wit, and a man of general 
information. His attainments placed him in a 
sphere above his brother-soldiers, and caused a 
feeling of dislike towards him, of which he was 
sensitively aware ; he courted no fellowship with 
them : his happiest moments were when he could 
escape for an instant from his bondage, and visit 
me, particularly as I had made him free of a 
small library — a trifling attention, for which 
he could not express his thanks in sufficiently 
grateful terms. The last time I saw him was 
at a review in the Place de Carousel, on the 
day his regiment was ordered to Spain; he 
came from the lines to speak to me, and ex- 
pressed his desire never to return alive; his 
wish was too well fulfilled, — he was nearly 
blown to atoms by the explosion of an ammu- 
nition waggon, near Logrono. I walked by 
the side of his horse as far as the Barriere 
i 



170 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

du Trone, where we separated ; his last words 
were, * Fall where, or by what means I may, I 
once more thank my God that I shall not fill a 
murderer's grave.' 



THE POLISH JEWESS. 



4 It is too true an evil : gone she is : 
And what's to come of my despised time, 
Is nought but bitterness.' 

OTHELLO. 



i2 



173 



THE POLISH JEWESS. 



% It is too true an evil : gone she is : 
And what's to come of my despised time ? 
Is nought but bitterness.' 

OTHELLO. 

The climes where the nights are cloudless, and 
skies starry; the region where the song of 
Adria's gondolier sweeps o'er the waters of the 
' blue and moonlit deep ; the land of palm-trees 
and spicy groves ; or the beautiful homes, the 
smiling retreats of the amiable Otaheitan and 
savage Zealander, which lie like gems on the 
bosom of the vast Pacific, never beheld a more 
magnificent night than that of St. John's Eve, 
1826, in the little seaport town of Calais. The 
solemn stillness of the hour was interrupted 
only by the monotonous music of the heavy bil- 
lows, as they lashed lazily against the pier, and 
went dancing along the sands, their tops crested 



174 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

with thin milky foam ; all nature seemed sunk 
in repose ; the bright moon and pale stars above, 
and the wide expanse of gently-heaving waters 
below, were the only objects over which the 
spirit of watchfulness appeared to preside ; a 
large armed lugger was gliding softly by, with 
all her sails set to catch the passing breeze, as 
I stood at the end of the pier ; she reminded 
me of the spectre ship that haunts the stormy 
shores of southern Africa ; I could faintly dis- 
tinguish two or three of her crew, and I fancied 
them decked in the high-crowned hats, pon- 
derous boots, and ample femoralia of the phan- 
tom crew ; I felt almost disappointed that I did 
not see the dolphins gambolling in her wake, 
and the slaves of the ocean-god speeding her 
on her course ; I thought it must necessarily be 
the precise night that the father of Proteus and 
Phorcus would select to guide his well-trained 
steeds across the limits of his empire; I could 
have wished to see Anadyomene rise from 
amidst the waves, and shake the briny moisture 
from her locks ; or the winged messenger of the 



THE POLISH JEWESS. 175 

gods fall rapidly through the world of stars into 
the milky arms of the mother of Cupid. But 
the spectre-ship was haunting other seas than 
that of the Pas de Calais — the phantom crew 
were stalking on the treacherous deck of their 
own vessel, unthought of by those who manned 
the lugger in the offing; the dolphins might 
have been sporting and revelling along the clas- 
sic shores which are swept by the iEgean, — -they 
certainly were not to be seen in the Straits of 
Dover ; and, for aught I know, the slaves of the 
ocean-god were there keeping them company ; 
the lover of Phoenice and Thesea was probably 
restraining the clashing fury of the swelling 
Adriatic, by unveiling his serene aspect to the 
waters, and rendering them auspicious to the 
coming of the worshipped goddess of Cytherea ; 
and, by the same license, we may suppose that 
Mercury himself was busied in some secret in- 
trigue for the gracious monarch of the immor- 
tals. The absence of each was thus accounted 
for: the dolphins, and sea-gods; the mighty 
ruler of storms and tempests ; the Amathusia 



176 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

Venus, and light-heeled Caducifer, prefer the 
smiling shores of the Levant to the rocky un- 
inviting coasts of our native strands. The 
river in which Shakspeare bathed his locks, and 
on whose banks Milton sang, is thought of only 
after the majestic Po, and gold-sanded Pactolus. 
What is the modern Athens to the Athens of 
the blue-eyed goddess of wisdom? or who 
would compare the Babylon of our days to the 
stupendous city of days of yore? The lug- 
ger, in the mean time, glided on her way, nobly 
breasting the rippling waves that broke against 
her prow, and bounded sportively from her 
sides ; she looked like a sleeping Leviathan, 
floating unconsciously over the face of the deep; 
she stood out northward, her form gradually 
lessening, till the sails could not be distinguished 
from her keel ; wore away into a mere unde- 
finable mass ; and was suddenly swallowed up 
in the obscurity that reigned afar off, beyond 
the power of human sight to penetrate. 

I remained on the jettee long after the lugger 
had disappeared, watching the few sail that 






THE POLISH JEWESS* 177 

danced merrily by, over the slightly-rippled 
waves ; my spirits had sunk into that quiescent 
state from which we are so reluctant to exert 
ourselves to throw off the lethargy, and enter 
the monotony of this every -day world ; but the 
bell of the town-hall began to wag its iron 
tongue, and ' the never-merry clock' to peal 
forth the hour appointed for closing the gates ; 
I awoke from my short-lived dream, and directed 
my footsteps towards the caravanserai of the 
hospitable M. Quillacq. What sensations Ovid 
may have experienced during the period of his 
banishment to Pontus, I am not on sufficiently 
good terms with the possessors of his private 
correspondence, to be enabled to say ; but I 
will affirm that, had Calais been the dirty sea- 
port town it is now, and the great Naso exiled 
thither, the author of the Metamorphoses, in- 
stead of dragging on his unhappy life for the 
weary space of nearly nine years, would have 
burst his bonds before the termination of as 
many months ; and in place of sinking into a 
welcome grave at Tomos, would have rendered 









178 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

the sea of Calais for ever memorable, by finding 
a noble sepulchre beneath its stormy depths ; 
thus urged on to commit, for ennui, what the 
Lesbian poetess did for love, and restore to the 
gods the wretched life which, in their wrath, 
they had conferred upon him. A four days' 
residence at Calais must be considered, by all 
reasonable people who have endured the inflic- 
tion, a sufficient purgative for all the sins of an 
indifferently long life ; the swamps of Walche- 
ren reek not with more aguish clouds of vapours 
than do the ditches and moats which encircle 
this frontier town ; it has all the disadvantages 
of Bruges and Dunkerque, without possessing 
one of their redeeming points : and then the 
society! (Proh pudor!) Boulogne is respec- 
table to it. The fraudulent bankrupt, the cri- 
minal forger, the ruffian duellist, smile on each 
other with the complacency of old acquaint- 
ances : the cashiered soldier disdains not to take 
the arm of some swindling clerk ; and the em- 
bezzler considers himself honoured by a nod of 
recognition from the destroyer of a family's 






THE POLISH JEWESS. 179 

peace. So much for the birds of passage. I 
have not a word to say against the established 
residents^ but that, unfortunately, these same 
birds of passage usually make no unconspicuous 
figure in the soirees and conversaziones of the 
town coterie. I trust, too, that no one will ever 
attempt to throw ridicule on the comparatively 
celestial shape of a Dutch woman, after he has 
seen an old poissarde beneath the ramparts of 
Calais. You may observe a few pretty faces 
among the young retailers of skait and had- 
docks ; but, slapperloot ! look at their mothers 
— alike, but,, oh ! how different. 

The day previous to my leaving Calais for 
Paris, I observed, among the company assem- 
bled round the table-d' hote, a fine elderly man, 
attended by a young girl, whose features plainly 
bespoke her to be, if not his daughter, at least 
near akin to him. A deep Jewish expression 
was strongly marked in the countenance of 
each, perhaps rather more lightly in the man's 
than in that of the female ; the latter possessed 
the true Arabian eyes, — not the soft, melting, 






180 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

languid cast of the Spanish Jewess, but the 
sleepless, never-dying glance of the oriental; 
they bespoke a mind overflowing with gaiety, 
a soul all mirth ; you would have taken them 
for the heralds of wit, the harbingers of merri- 
ment—but they belied her; you might, as I 
have already said, have observed an expression 
of unrestrained gaiety in the eyes, but it was 
softened by a melancholy cast that spread over 
her countenance, which rendered her infinitely 
more attractive, and 

1 Stole on your spirit like a May-day breaking !' 

She was rather above the middle size, and 
slightly inclined to embonpoint ; but there was 
grace in every gesture, and modesty in every 
look. 

The father, which he really was, had all the 
features of the Jew T about him, except the nose; 
he was tall and very upright ; had probably once 
been handsome, but time had ploughed deep 
furrows across his brow, and had not only 
thinned his flowing hair, but changed its colour; 



THE POLISH JEWESS. 181 

it was a shining grey, with here and there an 
occasional appearance of its original hue, in two 
or three black stray locks, that lurked, almost 
unheeded, under the long curling grey. It 
would be a matter of very little interest to my 
readers, to hear how our acquaintance was first 
formed at Calais, and cemented and strength- 
ened in the capital ; and it would be of as little 
concern to them to know of what part of Poland 
they were natives, or what object they pursued 
by journeying through France. During their 
sojournment in Paris, I had frequent opportu- 
nities of observing how completely their happi- 
ness centred in each other. There was some- 
thing holy in her admiration and reverence for 
him; his words were as oracles; never was 
such implicit faith put in the trumpery of oracles 
as this poor girl placed in the words of her fa- 
ther; not a wish but was anticipated; not a 
look directed towards her, but that the implied 
desire was gratified before the request was 
uttered. If her faith and respect and devotion 
were great towards him, his affection was no 



182 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

less unbounded : he was used to watch her 
slightest movements with the gratification known 
only to a father ; and after only a few hours' 
separation from the child of his heart, he would 
receive and enfold her in his arms with as much 
eagerness as if years had intervened since the 
period of their last meeting. Their residence, 
w r hich was near Passy, stood within one of the 
most beautiful enclosures that adorns the pre- 
cincts of Paris — with a garden which must have 
been arranged from some enchanting model of 
fairy-land, and through whose mazes we have 
often wandered, admiring ' the rosy flood of 
twilight sky.' 

* Ave Maria ! blessed be the hour, 
The time, the clime, the spot where I so oft 
Have felt that moment in its fullest power.' 

Born in Poland, and educated almost en- 
tirely in the land of her birth> her knowledge 
of French was, of course, any thing but perfect, 
and she used to lisp her words in the prettiest, 
most infantine way imaginable. I undertook to 
teach her English; but, whether it were owing 



THE POLISH JEWESS. 183 

to the dulness of the pupil, or the incapacity of 
the master, Miriam made but very little pro- 
gress ; she laughed at the uncouth sounds of 
our- northern guttural, and it was seldom that 
even a smiling frown could be summoned to re- 
press the insubordination ; such a flood of good 
humour floated round her eyes, and washed 
away the veil of melancholy that was at times 
spread over her countenance, that to feel anger 
with such a face was quite out of the question. 
I found I could do nothing as a master, — we 
exchanged places, and I became pupil, and 
student of Italian — of Latin in masquerade. 
From her accent you would have sworn that 
she were Tuscan, it flowed so sweetly from her 
rosy lips. I suppose her method of instruction 
was superior to mine — at least I know her pupil 
did credit to her efforts : s she smiled when I 
was right, and, when wrong, smiled still more.' 
I soon discovered how agreeable it was to be 
schooled in a strange tongue by such a teacher, 
and was as soon enabled to agree, with Byron, 
how much more agreeable— 



184 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

' When both the teacher and the taught are young.* 
Time, as it always does where happiness exists, 
flew apace ; / thought that no time could effect 
a change in their enviable state of felicity, it 
seemed so permanent, and the cause so entirely 
under their own control; — but the devil had 
been at work ; the tempter had spread his ve- 
nom, and had introduced despair and sorrow 
into an abode, which had hitherto been spe- 
cially devoted to all that was noble and virtu- 
ous, and where misfortune had never before 
intruded with his hateful presence. The cause 
of this sad reverse was intimated to me in a let- 
ter from the old man, which informed me of his 
daughter's disappearance from home, an act no 
less sudden than it was unexpected ; and of his 
utter ignorance whither she had fled, and of 
whom she had made the companion of her 
flight. I hastened to Passy, and found him 
in a state bordering on distraction; I think I 
never saw a man so entirely given up to the 
sway of grief, as he was to the first wild burst 
which overwhelmed him; he in vain laboured 



THE POLISH JEWESS. 185 

to give utterance to his words, and to make me 
in some degree acquainted with the full mea- 
sure of his anguish. After he had become 
comparatively calm, and enabled to communi- 
cate his sorrows, I learned, what I have already 
mentioned, — the sudden and unexpected flight 
of the child of his bosom, his own sweet Mi- 
riam. He knew of no attachment she could 
have formed, no outward change in her demea- 
nour indicated a fact so much dreaded; he was, 
at least, sure it could not be with any of his 
people, or wherefore this concealment? and 
the thought of her marrying with a Christian, 
was to him, in his own words, ten thousand 
times more dreadful than the idea of a Maho- 
metan's hell : he blessed and cursed her in a 
breath ; pitied her as the victim of some heart- 
less villain, and then execrated her for desert- 
ing her protector in a land of strangers ; called 
on her name, accompanying it with the most 
endearing epithets, as if she were there to an- 
swer the invocation, then heaped maledictions 
on the head of her and her seducer; and, fore- 



186 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

ibly opening and shutting the door, feigned to 
thrust them from the refuge they might be na- 
turally expected to seek in his house : ' May 
the heaviest curse of the God of Israel light on 
both — on him who has bereaved me of my own 
Miriam, and on her who has fled to the arms 
of a Christian, and left her father to pour his 
sorrows into the bosom of a stranger.' He 
sunk back exhausted, after pronouncing the 
malediction, and for some time lay motionless. 
I then began to devise some means for her re- 
covery, or at all events to discover her retreat, 
and promised to bring him the earliest intelli- 
gence, though where I was to seek it I knew 
not. He embraced me, wept over me, implored 
me to be the restorer of his child ; then, re- 
membering her ingratitude and unparalleled 
desertion of him, assured me, with dreadful 
oaths, that again to see her would be a greater 
curse than to know 7 she were dead ; and that I 
could not do him a more unwelcome, a more 
undesired service, than to bring her back to 
her father's arms. I lent no attention to such 



THE POLISH JEWESS. 187 

incoherence but gave him such advice as I 
thought the occasion required, and proceeded 
towards the Hotel Meurice, pondering what 
means I should pursue to attain the desired 
object, but I could not, with all my efforts and 
good-will to boot, shape any scheme bearing 
the stamp of feasibility, that was likely to be 
crowned with ultimate success ; my doubts on 
this point were, however, speedily removed, by 
the porter's placing in my hand a letter, which 
I fotmd signed Miriam Letellier. It gave me 
an account of her flight, and marriage — to a 
Christian; — there's death to all her hopes of 
reconciliation in that word, thought I, — -of her 
reluctance to leave her father, her anxiety to 
gain information how he supported the bereave- 
ment, and a joint invitation from herself and 
husband to visit them immediately, in order to 
arrange matters to open a negotiation with Mi- 
riam's parent, that might lead to a pardon and 
blessing on both. In all this, I saw well that I 
was expected to be the Mercury; but as the 
object in view was a noble one, I thought little 



188 



SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 



of the trouble, and immediately proceeded in a 
cabriolet to a distant quarter of Paris, where I 
was shortly after introduced to the presence 
of poor Miriam and her husband. ' And this,' 
said I to myself, on first directing my looks to 
the latter personage, ' this is, then, the man 
who has won all that a woman has to give, who 
has gained the heart of the noblest creature 
that ever threw herself on the protection of a 
miscreant to find disappointment and neglect.' 
The remark was involuntary on beholding him ; 
he did not possess one solitary trace of beauty 
in a countenance which was almost as swart as 
a raven, and rendered cadaverous, apparently 
through a long course of dissipation : the only 
anomaly I perceived in his features was, that 
his eyes should have retained all their bright- 
ness ; but even they, instead of lending beauty 
to the face, heightened its hideous expression, 
and, though they glared not with a sickly hue, 
yet seemed out of place, like gems on a corpse, 
or revelry in a sepulchre. I will not weary my 
readers by entering into a detail of my jouyneys 



THE POLISH JEWESS. 189 

to and fro, in order to effect the reconciliation 
so much desired, at least by Miriam: the old 
man was inexorable ; he would occasionally 
soften, and the tears would rush to his eyes as 
he spoke of her, but he firmly and resolutely 
refused to see her. ' She is married/ said he ; 
1 let her reap as she has sown : I could have 
received a deceived penitent, but the only de- 
ceit has been on her side ; she has despised the 
counsel of her father; let her suffer for her 
guilt ; her greatest anguish will be happiness 
to the hell I feel within me : my curse lie heavy 
on them both.' I saw that nothing but time 
could have any effect on his stern severity, and 
Miriam promised patience and endurance — in 
short, any thing that was likely to lead to rein- 
state her in her father's affection. 

A six months' absence from Paris had not 
caused me to forget either the Jew or his 
daughter. I corresponded with neither, but 
often heard of them, and, among other inform- 
ation, that the latter had not only made no pro- 
gress towards a reconciliation, but that at first 



190 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

the coolness, then neglect, and at length ill- 
treatment of the man whom she adored, had 
driven her to the verge of the grave. Letellier 
had written to the father concerning property 
to which, through some misconceived notion 
previous to their marriage, he fancied his wife 
possessed an undoubted right. The answer 
undeceived him, and was couched in the most 
violent terms, denying that Miriam could offer 
one legal claim to a centime; that she was an 
outcast from his love, and that they might both 
wither under his curse, sooner than he would 
advance any sum, however trifling, in the way 
of assisting them. Letellier cared little for the 
abuse heaped on himself ; he saw and thought 
only of his blasted hopes ; he had married for 
gain; he found himself still more deeply sur- 
rounded by ruin ; his correspondence with the 
father had disclosed to him a full view of his 
situation ; he cursed his own rashness, and 
went home to wreak his vengeance on his fond 
confiding wife. The latter was unable to bear 
up long against treatment found where she least 
expected it ; she had heard — 



THE POLISH JEWESS. 191 

• I The funeral note 

Of love deep buried 

In the grave of possession,' 

and sank unresisting under the consciousness 
of the dreadful truth. Coolness, neglect, and 
brutality had effected much during my absence, 
by despoiling her of her beauty, but the last 
drop in her already overflowing cup of bitter- 
ness was still in reserve — desertion : this, too, 
had come ; and when I called on her, the day 
after my arrival, I found her alone, wretched, 
and in tears. I will not linger over the chord 
of affliction ; let it suffice to say, that the de- 
serted girl found her father, as soon as I in- 
formed the latter that Miriam was deprived of 
her husband's protection. My opportunities of 
seeing them after this were very numerous, and 
I regretted that the former scene of happiness 
could not be traced in the dull course of obedi- 
ence that characterized the daughter, and the 
occasionally harsh observations which fell from 
the father, and struck to her heart. Miriam 
was not happy, and every day showed it; she 



192 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

looked on her parent with awe, not with love, 
and, strange to say, she remembered her be- 
trayer with affection, and his treachery with 
feelings of forgiveness. But to my denoue- 
ment: — I had been spending a week with them 
at Passy, and was one evening sitting with the 
old man in an apartment that looked into the 
garden, enjoying the cool air of a beautiful sum- 
mer's evening, and the prospect of every thing 
around us silvered by the rays of a magnificent 
moon. Miriam, indisposed, had retired early 
to rest; we were sitting without lights; the 
room was very lofty, and in the centre of the 
ceiling was a large flat skylight, through which 
the moon poured a rich, glorious flood of light. 
Our conversation had flagged, and we were in 
the enjoyment of our own thoughts, when we 
simultaneously perceived that some body ob- 
structed the light from above ; we looked up- 
ward and saw Miriam walking deliberately along 
the edge of the parapet ; her father started up 
in wild consternation, fancying that she was in 
her sleep, called to me to follow him, and darted 



THE POLISH JEWESS. 198 

up the stairs ; I implored him to keep his self- 
possession, and hastened after him ; but, before 
I reached the summit, a loud crash, and the 
noise of something falling heavily on the marble 
floor beneath, announced some dreadful occur- 
rence. In half-a-minute I was on the leads, 
and found that the old man, in his eagerness to 
rescue his daughter from her supposed perilous 
situation, had darted forward to save her, for- 
getful of the skylight, on which he had no 
sooner placed his foot, than he bore the whole 
frame-work away, and fell with it : on looking 
down, I saw him extended motionless on the 
ground ; I called to him, but received no an- 
swer ; my attention was next excited by Miriam, 
who stood, evidently unconscious of what had 
happened, gazing at the heavens like one fasci- 
nated by the sight. I carried her down stairs 
without meeting any opposition on her part, 
and, having delivered her into the keeping of 
some other of her father's friends, ran to make 
myself acquainted with his fate : he probably 
had not moved from the spot wherp he first 



194 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

fell, for, pitching on his head, instantaneous 
death must have been the consequence. I 
scarcely remember how I acted in my agitation ; 
I know I could think of but one being — the 
wretch who was, virtually, the murderer of a 
good father, and worse than the murderer of a 
fond wife. 



A FRIEND OF MINE. 



6 Peace ; sit you down, 

And let me wring your heart: for so I shall, 
If it be made of penetrable stuff; 
If damned custom have not brazed it so, 
That it be proof and bulwark against sense/ 

HAMLET. 



k2 



197 



A FRIEND OF MINE. 



( Peace; sit you down, 

And let me wring your heart : for so I shall, 
If it be made of penetrable stuff; 
If damned custom have not brazed it so, 
That it be proof and bulwark against sense. 

HAMLET. 

What an anomaly of nature is it, that some 
people, who have happiness within their reach, 
or who have every prospect of attaining it, 
should prefer to decline the contest, withdraw 
from the course, and impede the progress of 
others who are speeding, hand in hand, to- 
wards the goal ! how much greater is the ano- 
maly, when we find such extraordinary per- 
verseness in those of whonTcommon sense and 
education should have effected better things ! 
What an ungrateful subject to write upon such 
a person! How still more painful when that 
person is defined by the magic name of woman! 



198 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

In intimacy or connection between women, is 
there a more glorious spectaele, in this all- 
beautiful world, than the observance of the af- 
fections dependent upon the holy tie which 
binds two sisters. Worldly affairs, worldly 
passions, worldly griefs, often interrupt, and 
but too often destroy, fraternal love ; brothers 
may succeed in impressing superficial observers 
with an idea of their mutual devotion, and, in 
fact, that devotion may be honest and disinter- 
ested; but what is it, after all, to the mellow, 
subdued tone of feeling, remarkable in sisters ? 
No worldly sorrows, no sublunary considera- 
tions, can diminish their affection; grief and 
joy touch both alike; their world is of their 
own creation, — their sorrows must be of ano- 
ther's making. I once knew a pair who thus 
lived in a world of enchantment, the work of no 
magic but what they found in essentially con- 
tributing to each other's happiness ; the elder 
was a creature all mildness and affection for her 
whom she held in her heart of hearts; her 
beauty was of the Pensoroso cast, ' her rapt 



A FRIEND OF MINE. 199 

soul sat in her eyes/ and from that heavenly 
throne seemed to watch with a mother's solici- 
tude over the welfare of her younger sister ; 
the latter was the personification of health and 
gaiety ; she seemed like a young envoy sent by 
the former ( with rosy gifts upon her cheeks/ 
and was the very beau ideal of Milton's Allegro, 
all smiles, and beauty, and good sense ; they were, 
in all things but goodness, living contrasts ; the 
elder, a blue-eyed, fair-haired seraph, resem- 
bling some spirit of Religion wandering upon 
earth, the other made up of light-heartedness 
and innocence — easily excited and as easily 
dejected; she would shed tears, yet change 
them instantaneously to smiles, and was full of 
the ' rainbow-joys that end in weeping. 1 Will 
it be believed that there was one miscreant 
enough to trifle with the affections of this inex- 
perienced girl; to gain the rich idolatry of this 
spotless being; to display the attractions of his 
mind and person, (the wretch possessed both,) 
and to terminate by earning the icy damnation 
of a seducer? There was such a being; he was 



200 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

what the world calls a man of talent, a pleasant 

companion, the life of society, a man of a 

man! 'twere gross adulation to call him villain. 
When I first became acquainted with him, he 
was really an admiring and an admired mem- 
ber of a large circle of friends ; he was a man 
whose greatest fault was, as Jean Jacques says, 
d'etre honteux et timide comme tine vierge; but 
he unfortunately fell into the habit of consider- 
ing what men term amiable vices, as crimes of 
no such great magnitude ; his talents, as a poet, 
were of no mean order, but he was as fickle in 
verse as he was in love, and used to quote the 
good La Fontaine, and smile at his own ability 
when he thought the quotation well applied. 
His outward appearance was every way calcu- 
lated to please ; his conversation sparkled with 
wit and intelligence, which he possessed the tact 
of displaying without any apparent effort of 
wishing to excite admiration ; and, if his subject 
were satirical, he could mangle his victim with 
every visible demonstration of cool good humour ; 
but the result proved that he had that within, 



A FRIEND OF MINE. 201 

which, in most cases, speedily swept away the 
first favourable impression he so well knew how 
to inspire ; his passions were not ' among pure 
thoughts hid ;' of them he had but few, — they 
were coiled up, a torpid knot of venom, 

* Like serpents upon flow'rets sleeping;' 

but only torpid till a fitting season roused the 
reptile from its slumber, to crawl forth from the 
retiring shades, and warm its loathsome mass 
in the bright sun. I sometimes fancy that I can 
remember the first time his heart inclined to- 
wards ill, but I have seen him so often since 
smiling in drawing-rooms with all the quiet, un- 
restrained amiability of more worthy men, that, 
for any thing I now know to the contrary, he 
might, at the period of my introduction to him, 
have been playing a part, and inwardly meditate 
ing evil. His victim still lives, if the unceas- 
ing throbbings of a broken heart can be called 
living ; the elder sister sank beneath the bur- 
then; I need not ask who was virtually her 
murderer ; and the rascal, whose steps polluted 



202 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

the fair earth he walked upon, died as he de- 
served — he breathed out his loathsome exist- 
ence in a ditch, and his bloated carcass lay, for 
two days, noisome and unowned, on a dung- 
heap. A name, or a reference to the period, 
would bring the whole subject afresh before 
the public ; his appellation is too well known 
ever to be forgotten by the world ; it is only 
charity to allow her's, whose life-long happiness 
he has sacrificed, to remain buried in the igno- 
minious obscurity to which hL wretched, sensual 
villainy has con^ned ■'.. TLj world is unfor- 
tunately much accustomed to consider the crimes 
of a seducer wi^li too great a degree of le- 
niency, and it is the cant of the day to throw all 
the blame upon her who has confided on a pro- 
mise made with no intention of being kept ; — 
upon her who has looked upon the inhuman 
fiend as the soul of honour, and exulted in wor- 
shipping him, the only true god of her idolatry ; 
— he, the demon, stalks abroad, he knows no 
shame, he acknowledges no law, he respects no 
bond of civilized society; he looks with the 



A FRIEND OF MINE. 203 

craving glance and ruthless jealousy of a vam- 
pire at a happy home ; he treads upon all the 
observances of mankind; at his presence, joy, 
content, virtue, honour, fly ; and at his depar- 
ture, he bequeaths misery, shame, disgrace, and 
death : with a stale jest and lying proverb, he 
again curses the world with his aspect, seeking 
out some other domestic circle, that he may 
overthrow its happiness, — in quest of some other 
victim to sacrifice at the shrine of his damned 
brutality. What are the minor faults, the par- 
donable errors of a woman, to the cold selfish- 
ness, the low calculations, the infamous thoughts 
of a man? Think of her — 'the last, the best 
reserve of God/-— as an attendant on a bed of 
sickness ; surely, if religion ever soften a man's 
obdurate feelings, it must be chiefly at that mo- 
ment when something so like divinity, and bear- 
ing so near a resemblance to the purity of an- 
gels, is ministering to a mind diseased, soothing 
bodily anguish, and teaching us, by her pa- 
tience, her silent suffering, her anxious affec- 
tion, and her superior self-possession in the 



204 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

crisis of a dangerous malady, how far she is 
above our grovelling comprehension, how stea- 
dily she performs the allotted duty for which 
the Deity created her, and what an endless debt 
of deep gratitude we owe to them, without whom 
the world would be as nothing. — It has been said 
that coquettes are the refuse of their sex, and 
that they were only ordained to correspond 
with the coxcombs of ours ; the latter assertion 
is too evident to be denied ; the former may — - 
does admit of doubt. Coquettes and coxcombs 
are worthy of each other ; I would not throw 
away a thought upon either : — the refuse, the 
disgrace of the female sex is she who cannot, 
with self-satisfaction, view the happiness which 
others are enjoying ; she who would blast the 
prospects of her friends with mildew and rust ; 
who tortures and perplexes truth till she frames 
it and fashions it to her own vile purposes, and 
uses it for the destruction of those with whom she 
has broken bread ; to injure those who would 
fain be friends ; to destroy the superstructure 
raised by some bright creation of fancy ; and all 



A FRIEND OF MINE. 205 

for the mean gratification of her own base, can- 
kered envy : such a woman is void of all deli- 
cacy of feeling, and consequently outrages, un- 
abashed, the feelings of others ; such a woman 
sees nothing in the most commonplace actions, 
but what she would extort from them some mo- 
tives quite alien to the true ones : she does no- 
thing but you'll find interestedness lurking under 
it ; she has no thought but for self, and is one 
vile compound of falsehood and malice : she 
alone is the true corresponding pendant for the 
seducer, as the coquette is for the coxcomb ; 
she alone, of all her sex, tramples upon the 
rights of her sisters ; she is awkward too in her 
sarcasm, — she cannot (she would not, if she 
could,) make her incisions with a keen-tempered 
razor, but cuts and haggles away with a ragged 
blade, heedless that ' the flesh will quiver where 
the pincers tear ;' regardless that c the blood 
will follow where the knife is driven :' she de- 
stroys her victims by gradual torture ; she stains 
the bright surface of their reputation with her 
poisonous breath ; she prolongs their torments, 



206 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

she goes on steadily in her work of murder— 

the assassination of a good name ; she ridicules 

the idea of human suffering, and her gloating 

eyes are fixed with wild exultation on the wreck 

and ruin her treachery has effected : — 

1 Like Helen, on the night that Troy was sack'd, 
Spectatress of the mischief she herself had made.' 

Such a woman does not exist, say you ? I 
affirm such a woman does exist, and / was once 
blessed with her acquaintance : — ' Then revile 
not the dead,' you rejoin: — ' Dead!" she lives, 
the slave of her own worthless passions — lives, 
to spit her foul venom on all who cross her 
path, where she sits like an incubus, brooding 
over her own hellish thoughts. I owe her an 
article, — she is one of the most disagreeable of 
my Reminiscences ; but she is a character : as 
such, I will trace her outlines; and, should this 
page ever fall under her inspection, the fair 
object herself can fill up, and finish the sketch. 
I first saw her in Paris, of which city she is a 
constant resident : I found her with education, 
with good sense to apply it, and good looks to 



A FRIEND OF MINE. 207 

enhance the value of her other attractions : but 
her education had effected nothing in the cor- 
rection of her errors ; her good sense was over- 
whelmed by the fierce current of passions with 
which we are all occasionally agitated, and in 
conquering and subduing which consists the 
height of human virtue. And what were her 
good looks, of what account was her beauty, 
when malice, and envy, and jaundiced suspicion 
were at work, and stood confessed in the ex- 
pression of her features ? She was a thing of 
art, all guile and deceit, and flowery words ; 
but she had not the art of concealing the con- 
flict which inwardly consumed her: she was an 
adept, however, in every other branch of de- 
ception, a female Tartuffe, one who was all sun- 
shine and fair weather when her purposes so 
needed it ; assuming qualities which belonged 
not to her, and betraying those who were de- 
ceived by the simple innocence of a baby face ; 
like the song of the syren, enticing the atten- 
tive and confiding listener; attracting him among 
hidden snares and covered pits ; and luring 
him through gardens, and meadows, and or- 



208 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. 

chards, till he suddenly and unexpectedly stands 
on the brink of a tottering precipice, which yields 
to his pressure, and hurls him headlong into de- 
struction. And such was this torch of discord, 
this female fury, who could put on the mask of 
virtue, and ' smile and smile, and murder as 
she smiled.' Good God! I thought, that such 
a creature, who has the power of making her- 
self beloved, should be so perverse, and act so 
directly opposite to the nature of her sex! that 
she should be such a slave to the hell she lived 
in, and allow all that was base, and mean, and 
paltry, to usurp the station allotted to the qua- 
lities which confer grace and dignity on the 
wearers ! 

Some time had elapsed subsequent to the 
period of my introduction to her, before the 
mask fell from her face, and discovered the hi- 
deous features it had previously concealed; 
there is nothing left now for me, but to regret 
that I was not enlightened sooner; and to say, 
with Almaviva, Madame, vous joules fort bien 
la comedie : she played her part so naturally, 
that I entirely misconceived her true character : 



A FRIEKD Of MINE. 209 

I thought her what she represented — a being 
all benignity, overflowing with the milk of hu- 
man kindness, and a child of ingenuousness; 
but c smooth runs the water where the brook is 
deep, and in her simple show she harboured 
treason.' A base act of treachery in perverting 
truth, and framing it into an odious lie, first 
declared the danger of conversing with a wo- 
man so malicious: I remember my burst of in- 
dignation on the fact being communicated to 
me by a friend ; my anger knew no bounds. I 
was sorry that I could not act against the evi- 
dence of my senses, which thus undeniably as- 
sured me that such a disgrace to her sex did 
actually exist. Various conflicting passions 
combatted within me, and I raged on, like ' a 
full-hot horse,' till self-mettle tired me. I had 
been told, that to be faithful was a woman's re- 
ligion, and I regretted to find even one excep- 
tion to so beautiful a creed ; ' my hopes in her 
touched the ground, and dashed themselves to 
pieces.* 

THE END. 



ERRATUM. 

Page 41, lines 3 and 4 from top; for, l above his buttons/ 
read ' above buttons/ 



G, Davidson, Printer, 
Merle's Place, Carey Street, London. 



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